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COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN ENGLISH 
AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE 



JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

NEW YORK 



SALES AGENTS 

LONDON 

HUMPHREY MILFORD 
Amen Corner, E.C. 

SHANGHAI 

EDWARD EVANS & SONS, Ltd. 
30 North Szechuen Road 



JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 



BY 

JOHN 0. BEATY 



Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Require- 
ments for the Degree of Doctor of 
Philosophy, in the Faculty of 
Philosophy, Columbia 
University 



Mtto lorfe 

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
1922 



*cs^cJ\pX\ 






Copyright, 1922 
By Columbia Univkbsity Pbess 



Printed from type. Published, September, 1922. 



L,B ™^ Or CON&KH5S 

DEC 14192? 



TO 

C. ALPHONSO SMITH 



. 



PREFACE 

Among Virginia writers whose careers have come to a 
close, John Esten Cooke holds a conspicuous place. He 
is by far the most voluminous, and has exerted great in- 
fluence on later novelists. He is thoroughly Virginian, 
and is perhaps second to Poe in the intrinsic importance 
of his work. 

Since neither Cooke nor his literary background has 
been the subject of a definitive study, I have, in writing 
this critical biography, relied very slightly on printed 
sources but am in consequence largely indebted to a num- 
ber of Virginians and others who have helped me gain 
access to first-hand material. Dr. Robert P. P. Cooke and 
Mrs. Charles Lee, children of the novelist, have kindly 
placed at my disposal eight manuscript volumes and hun- 
dreds of letters and other papers which belonged to their 
father. Cooke's nieces, Miss Mariah Pendleton Duval and 
Mrs. Carter H. Harrison, have likewise furnished me with 
manuscripts and have entertained and instructed me with 
reminiscences of their uncle. My research work has been 
facilitated by the courtesy of the officials of the Library of 
Congress, of the New York Public Library, and of the Li- 
brary of Columbia University. I owe much, for assistance 
of one kind or another, to each of the following gentlemen : 
Mr. J. B. Ficklin, Jr., the Southern genealogist; General 
Thomas T. Munford, a boyhood and Civil War friend of 
Cooke; Reverend C. Braxton Bryan, Cooke's pastor in the 
eighties ; Professor Killis Campbell ; Mr. W. G. Stanard, Li- 
brarian of the Virginia Historical Society ; Mr. H. R. Mcll- 

vii 



viii PREFACE 

waine, Librarian of the State of Virginia; Dr. Oral S. 
Coad; Dr. R. F. Dibble; Professor Jay B. Hubbell, whose 
forthcoming Virginia Life in Fiction will serve as an excel- 
lent background to this biography; Dr. Carl Van Doren, 
Literary Editor of The Nation; Professor George Philip 
Krapp; and Professor William Peterfield Trent, the lead- 
ing historian of American literature. My wife, Josephine 
Powell Beaty, has given me some very valuable criticism and 
has helped prepare the manuscript for the press. To Mrs. 
Beaty and to Messrs. Coad, Van Doren, Hubbell, and Trent 
my indebtedness is particularly great. 

J. 0. B. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I 

PAGK 

Early Life — Choosing a Profession , 1 

CHAPTER II 
Gentleman and Novelist of Old Virginia 30 

CHAPTER III 
The Civil War— Soldier and Historian 73 

CHAPTER IV 
The Problems of Reconstruction — Writer and Farmer 110 

CHAPTER V 
Last Years — Conclusion 139 

Bibliography 164 

Index 169 



John Esten Cooke, Virginian 

CHAPTER I 

EARLY LIFE— CHOOSING A PROFESSION 

At the age of twenty-one John Esten Cooke composed 
and copied in a ledger an account of his early life. Like 
all of its author 's notebooks and diaries, this autobiograph- 
ical fragment was written in a readily legible hand which 
on the title page and at chapter headings is even comparable 
to engraved lettering. The beautiful manuscript is further 
embellished with three-color pen and ink drawings of child- 
hood scenes. "I was born," the future novelist and his- 
torian recorded in his initial sentence, "in the house on 
'Ambler's Hill,' Winchester, November 3, 1830." Delight- 
ful as this sketch is, it does not lend itself well to copious 
quotation. It is not only rambling, but is heavily weighted 
with the moral platitudes of a serious-minded youth. Cooke, 
moreover, with typical self-effacement, did not make him- 
self quite sufficiently the central figure of his narrative; 
he spoke nearly as freely of his relatives as of himself. 
That he was not writing with an eye on the possible general 
reader of the future is, however, shown by the fact that he 
omitted — merely because they were obvious to him — such 
important items as the names of his parents. Throughout 
his life Cooke was, for his environment, very democratic — 
far more so than his brother Philip, who wrote of the glory 
of "caste;" hut it is nevertheless surprising that a Vir- 

1 



2 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

ginian should begin any life history without some attention 
to ancestry. Whatever the youthful Cooke may have 
thought of his forebears — whether he merely took them for 
granted or considered the question unimportant — many of 
them had graced an honorable birth with lives of service and 
achievement. t 

According to one of Cooke's diaries, an ancestor of the 
name came to America from the county of Hereford, Eng- 
land. The date of his arrival is not recorded, but he must 
have been an early settler; for a descendant, Nathaniel, 
great-grandfather of the novelist, was a native of Boston. 
Nathaniel Cooke seems to have moved later to Philadelphia, 
where, according to the novelist, he became a wealthy 
ship-owner and assisted the Colonial government with his 
money. 

Nathaniel's son Stephen Cooke, as so many of his descend- 
ants were destined to do, led a life which was both success- 
ful and romantic. He is variously said to have attended 
Princeton and to have been sent to "one of the English 
universities ; " in any case he became a physician. He saw 
service in the Revolutionary War as a surgeon, and was in 
Fort Moultrie when the British attacked it. From Charles- 
ton he set out by sea for Philadelphia, but was captured 
and carried to Bermuda. Here the authorities seem to 
have allowed him the freedom of the island, for he was 
soon well acquainted with the "staunch Whig," John Esten, 
a prominent government official who was at one time presi- 
dent of the Bermuda Assembly. Stephen fell in love with 
Catherine Esten, daughter of John Esten and grand-daugh- 
ter, on her mother's side, of Nathaniel Spofforth, a gentle- 
man, of Yorkshire origin, then prominent in Bermuda. 
Before the end of hostilities, the young surgeon appeared 
in Boston, presumably through an exchange of prisoners, 
and shortly served his country in a new capacity by bring- 



EARLY LIFE— CHOOSIN SION 3 

ing salt from th as in "ai hackly schooner." 

When the war was over he returned at once to Bermuda. 
Here he married . a E iten and his home, 

but he subsequent ly : •. a tfei ; actict irk Island 

in the Bahamas. In 1791 he mo< i ed States, 

settling in Alex;; irginia, where he 'ed consid- 

erable property. He est, in 1801 on an es- 

tate in Loudon County and died fifteen years later, long 
survived by his British wife who lived to e revered by 
numerous grand uhild 

Fourteen chil to Stephen 

and Catherine Bsten numerotu family two 

sons, the eldest and tl i degree of 

nation-wide imp< • ; e; while another, the hird in order 
of birth, was a promi ginia lawyer wh became the 

father of the n velist. 

Stephen's eldest son was named in honor of his maternal 
grandfather. His name, John Es1 m Cooke, I frequently 
been confused of his bexter known rephew — the 

more easily because the uncle was also . The elder 

John Esten Cc ifarch 2, 1783, on 

a visit of his parents ■ ived the de- 

gree of Doctor !-; Medicint 1 of Pennsyl- 

vania, he bega i his -in Warre iquier Coun- 

ty, Virginia. He removed in 1821 to Winchester where his 
writings on few; began to at- 

tract attention . In 1827 i.' i Chair of the 

Theory and P f Medicir in the University of Tran- 

sylvania," ami - duties h I ington, Ken- 

tucky. With <'; • ■ oratioa of Dr. W. Short, he 

i Notes on si: sons an o daughters, togetli.. , - ith many other 

genealogical de of the Cooke 

family, are foui lilies, published 

in The Lookout (C 



4 JOH 5STEK COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

founded, in 11 Journ Medicine and 

the Associate Sciences. B u ;ted in theol- 

ogy than in medicine, Dr. ok part in t religious con- 

troversy, put himself through a severe 1 which even 

included bleeding — in is brain clear — and 

produced in i hort time a book, The invalidity of 

Presbyterian Ordination. ■ He was soon made "Professor 
of the Historj and P -.■'■;•} of the Church" in ihe newly es- 
tablished Epi- opalian Seminary at Lexington. Later, 
when Episcopalianism waned in Kentucky, Dr. Cooke be- 
came a profc sor in the medical institute at Louisville. 
From this pos " i >n he retired to a farm on the Ohio, where 
he died in his ,ar on October 9, 1853. 

Stephen's y Philip St. George ' !ooke (1809- 

1895) was born in Virginia. He was gradua ed from the 
United States y Academy in 1827, served with dis- 

tinction in the Mexican and Indian campaigns, and was a 
brigadier-gene],;] in the Civil War. 

In spite of his career as a most active soldier chiefly engaged 
in frontier work. General Cooke found time to cultivate 
his share of the family bent for writing. From his pen 
came several volumes; of which the most important are per- 
haps Scenes and Advi he Army: or Romance of 
Military Life, whi< h m oroug'h.1 out by Lindsay and Blak- 
iston at Philadelphia in 1856, and The & nq test of New 
Mexico and Cat fid Personal Narrative, 
published by G. P. Putna While in the 
West the young officer wrote industriously 'o his older 
brother, the fathe I he ; relist, sought th< aid of the 
nephew in arranging the publication of articles, and in 
other ways made a rather notable effort to k^ep in touch 
with the Virginia members of his family. His different 
environment, however, fu the development of po- 
litical ideals which thrcv /ainst his relatives in the 



EARLY LIFE- -CHOOSING A P ' ON 5 

Civil War, thus a ling an int cresting 3 family- 

history. 

John Rogers Co< >x\ of Stephen and father of the 

novelist, was born in Bermuda in 1788. He came to America 
with his parents, attended William and Mary College and 
Princeton, studied law, and settled for practice at Martins- 
burg, (now) West Virginia. Jt<- served in the War of 1812, 
and in the Virgii t legislature, but the erownm;; achieve- 
ment of his career was his work with Madison, Marshall, and 
others in 1829 in drafting the new com »n of his 

adopted state. 

According to 1 ' on's n jro mammy, John liters Cooke 
was the glass of Eashioi of the scarcely d an border 

town of Martinsburg He was soon in love 1 laria Pen- 

dleton, a daughter of Philip Pendleton of Berkeley County. 
If the young lawyer had actu in mind the supple- 

menting of the Literary talent of his future .lildren, he 
could not have more wisely chosen hi s wife. Pendleton, 

a grandniece oi the well-known # udge Edm iad Pendle- 
ton of the Revolution, ' ' was a member of a. ted family. 
John Pendleton Kennedy, the author of 8 wall > v Barn and 
Horseshoe Robinson, ;rother, who is perhaps 
better known under his pseudonym, "Porte iyon," both 
had Pendleton blood in their veins As Stephen Cooke did 
not know the Pendleton fame i: on seni him a pic- 
ture of Mark ;nd wrote for permission to ask her in 
marriage. Almost in ly, however, in a second letter 
he announced bis engagemen tie first litter the old 
gentleman replied that, if the portrait was a good likeness, 
he and his wife '"' would not hlive any objection;" he in- 
sisted, nevertheless, that it "would not \ prudent" to be- 
come involved "in the expense^ of a family" before enough 
had been saved for at least onrf; year < e misfortune. 
After receiving the son's second letter, ho •■ \er, the father 



6 JOHN BSTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

naturall.y fell that the seeking of parental approval had 
been "a mere compliment;" consequently he concluded: 
"All thai is now necessary for us is to express our sincere 
wish tha : eaven may bJess y you may be happy 

in the ch i e you have made.'' Upon a c ; uaintance Stephen 
came to ter-in-law highly. His appraisal 

of her p iken as > of her personal 

charm, and her correspoj ler to have been 

a worthy and capable oman. When the pressure of law 
practice bin ' • husband in Charles Town she herself 
oversaw the work on "Glengary," th;' I'endleton estate to 
which they had moved from "V She recommended 

that he "try to g before d sat'y," described 

interestingly the garden and I ements, and told 

of having the servants work where each would be most 
"efficient. In add! arm, and house- 

wifely skill, Mrs. Cook* possessed another admirable qual- 
ity, a deep affection for her family. The novelist's first 
memories are of the ' ul" mother who 

watched over hi od. 'Dear little John Ety is 

my shadov " she wroti to her husband in the spring of 
1833. "I hi v* i put him to bi , room and he is 

as happy as possible.'' 

John R< • ers Cooke lirteen children, 

of whom fi-v igh to figur prominently in 

family pa] ers and h eave d scendants. The 

five, in th< irder of birth, were Philip Pendleton, Henry 
Pendleton, John Esten, Mary Pendleton, and Sarah Dan- 
dridge. ( • the re] ue (the oldest 

daughter), Edmund ird St. George 

("Sainty" the sons who 

died early Fohn Est 1 before it was 

given to thi 

The earl; ^ren Coei e differed little 



EARLY LIFE— CHOOSING A PROFESSION 7 

from that of the normal ante-bellum Virginia boy brought 
up on a country estate. Of the four brothers he mentions in 
his autobiography, Philip and Edmund were too old and 
Edward was too young for intimate companionship, but 
John records that he and Henry prowled about together ' ' in 
the run, over the woods, up the trees, doing all manner of 
mischievous things." In retrospect he seemed to have been 
a "far more important personage" then than as a young 
lawyer and author in Richmond. "A merry child, also 
a great pet, on a farm is a miniature king. Thus Henry 
and myself . . . wandered over the domains of Glengary 
at our own will and pleasure." The two boys flew 
kites, fought bumble-bees with shingles, hunted hickory- 
nuts, ate melons and peaches "gathered by stealth," and 
fished "with pinhooks for minnows." John had the farm- 
boy's sense of proprietorship, for he speaks of "swearing 
lustily" at the town-boy apple-robbers who descended upon 
the "Glengary" orchard. He performed various little 
tasks from gathering strawberries to watering horses, and 
went through the usual blundering but instructive attemp 
at service; one day, for instance, he "went to burn stu 
with Henry and set the whole field on fire." "Put mt 
he wrote in the autobiographical sketch, "in the middle of 
negro boys and girls, with a whip, a top, a torn straw-hat, 
and wagon : freckled and barefooted, and my portrait in 
those times is complete." 

The most fascinating figure with whom Jol 
into contact in his boyhood was his eldest brother, Ph 
Pendleton Cooke, who was fourteen year- his senic 
was perhaps the most brilliant mem V. or ever b 
family. At fifteen he entered Princeton, 
of several of his ancestors, developed a f 
cer and Spenser, and received his bar 
Knickerbocker Magazine. He contribute 



8 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

ume of the Southern Literary Messenger, and at his death 
in January, 1850, left unfinished in this magazine a story, 
The Chevalier Merlin. Philip 's only volume, Froissart Bal- 
lads, and Other Poems (Carey and Hart, Philadelphia, 
1847), showed him to be a master of verse technique. One 
of the poems, "Florence Vane," seems sure of immortality 
in American anthologies : 

"I loved thee long and dearly, 

Florence Vane; 
My life's bright dream and early, 

Hath come again; 
I renew in my fond vision 

My heart's dear pain, 
My hope, and thy derision, 

Florence Vane. 



"Thou wast lovelier than the roses 

In their prime; 
Thy voice excelled the closes 

Of sweetest rhyme; 
Thy heart was as a river 

Without a main. 
Would I had loved thee never, 

Florence Vane! 

"The lilies of the valley 

By young graves weep, 
The pansies love to dally 

Where maidens sleep ; 
May their bloom, in beauty vying, 

Never wane 
Where thine earthly part is lying, 

Florence Vane!" 

w greater talent than does "Florence Vane," 

mt,. b eir length and the less universal appeal 

, are not ^s well known as they deserve 



EARLY LIFE— CHOOSING A PROFESSION 9 

The tragedy of Philip Pendleton Cooke's life is revealed 
in the numerous still extant letters which he wrote to 
his father. It has been said that when he was not hunt- 
ing he divided his time between law and literature. Hunt- 
ing and literature surely kept him from making a success 
of law, just as hunting and law prevented him from fulfill- 
ing his true destiny as a poet. A harassing result of the 
forfeited profession or the betrayed talent was a lack of 
funds which was practically unrelieved except by gifts 
from his father. But the Philip of his brother's auto- 
biography — described as reading, writing, and storing his 
hunting trophies in the detached son's-house or "office" 
typical of Southern estates — had not yet entered upon his 
brilliant troubled years. He was, nevertheless, already con- 
tributing to magazines, and John Esten, nourishing an un- 
developed literary talent, was doubtless duly impressed. 
The "noble voice and dark eyes" as well as the "delicate 
black mustache" of the poet were vividly recalled many 
years later. To Henry and John, however, Phil's crown- 
ing attribute was his skill as a hunter, and the scent of 
gunpowder almost invariably accompanies the poet into 
the pages of his brother's autobiography, whether he has 
killed a deer "at eighty yards with a ball under the eye," 
has brought in an unusually fine wild turkey or Indian 
hen, or has merely exploded a large fire-cracker in a man- 
ner calculated to impress a small boy. The death of a 
favorite dog was the occasion of a burial in state with a 
cortege of small brothers and negroes, the poet firing a 
salute over the grave of the "pointer-emperor." Before 
little John was strong enough to raise his gun, Phil would 
hold it and allow him to pull the trigger, but in spite of, 
or perhaps because of, this early experience John never 
developed a fondness for hunting. Poetry and the chase 
can, however, scarcely have completely dominated Phil's 



10 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

early life, since, at the age of twenty, two years after leav- 
ing Princeton, he married Miss Willie Anne Burwell, who 
came to live at "Glengary." " Sister "Willie," as she was 
henceforth to be known to the large family of marriage kin, 
was to John a "being come from fairyland." She must 
have been gratified by her reception in her new home, for 
the family letters in the next quarter of a century speak 
of her in terms of the deepest affection. 

The Cookes at "Glengary" were, as has been suggested, 
a mutually devoted family, and were not averse to express- 
ing their feelings. Scores of letters, by words as well as 
by the reflection of generous actions, bear testimony to their 
affection for each other. John never tired of paying tribute 
to his mother, but his subsequent extreme devotion to his 
father was slower in developing. "Pa" at this period was 
a "dignified and most affectionate being of superior nature 
to the rest of the world who gave me all I wished or ca- 
priced . . . and never thwarted my desires." As may be 
surmised, the boy's love was not confined to relatives; the 
family slaves shared largely in his good-will. Upon one 
occasion an obstreperous negro youth named Sawney had 
been sold to a " gentleman in Winchester who engaged never 
to sell him to the South." John went up to the sobbing 
slave-mother, Mammy Giddy, and told her "not to cry," 
that he "would be her son." From that time the black 
woman loved him "especially and particularly," and forty 
years later, a decade after the war, was the nurse of his 
children. "God forbid," he wrote toward the end of his 
life, "that I should ever be anything but proud of that old 
negro's affection. Not so long as I live." 

It is not surprising that a boy capable of such deep affec- 
tion should have soon exhibited a reflective turn of mind. 
"Sister Willie says I was a bright, sunny-faced child, full 
of mischief, with dancing eyes, round red cheeks, and very 



EARLY LIFE— CHOOSING A PROFESSION 11 

gay; yet spite of all often sunk in deep reveries. I would 
sit, she says, at a table with an open book before me, one 
arm round the book, my head supported by the other hand, 
pretending to read, but really in profound thought." At 
seven, swinging on the garden gate, the boy first realized 
that "all was imperfect." He recalled "looking at the 
hearse on grandma's death with an unbelieving, unrealizing 
simple curiosity. ' ' He believed firmly in ' ' certain country- 
side superstitions of the period," and would hasten by a 
closet on the stairway where a "white-lady ghost" resided. 
A feeling of anything but interest was excited in him by 
the "girls from town" who came out to play with his sis- 
ters, Sal and Mary; but he approved of his cousin "Puss" 
Kennedy, whom he regarded vaguely as a sweetheart though 
he had never seen her — ' ' like the minstrel Rudel, who never 
saw the dame of Tripoli." When "Glengary" was de- 
stroyed by fire, the family moved temporarily to the over- 
seer's quarters. Although forbidden to go near the ruins, 
John did so surreptitiously to collect nails from the ashes, 
and "became more serious in the presence of those old 
tottering walls of the burnt house, through whose window- 
openings poured sun, moon, and the white dim starlight." 
The destruction of "Glengary" and its furnishings per- 
haps dictated in large degree the removal of the parents 
in the summer of 1838 with their eight children to Charles 
Town, where the father's office was situated. On the farm 
Henry and John were already accustomed to being sum- 
moned by the farm bell from work or play to read a 
History of Scotland or Charles Rollin's Ancient History, 
and at Charles Town they were entered at the school of a 
Mr. Sanburn — perhaps the original of Parson Tag of The 
Virginia Comedians — a "most severe and unconscionable 
old rascal" who was obsequious to parents but fell into 
"diabolical rages" against his pupils. Outside of this 



12 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

school, which John bitterly hated, his life was little different 
from what it had been in the country, except that white 
boys succeeded the black ones as companions. The prowling 
now, save for Saturday rambles, was largely confined to 
the various quarters of the town. John participated in the 
usual ' ' harum-scarum youthful deviltry, ' ' broke a window, 
paid frequent visits to the livery stable and the town pump, 
played ball, and exchanged green pears for powder through 
the garden fence with a town rowdy between whom and 
himself "there was an uninterrupted contest as to which 
should bully the other — the great world in miniature!" 
While one of his small friends was trying to make an elec- 
trical machine, and another was championing a circulating 
library, John was on the one hand profoundly impressed by 
the new railroad, and on the other was already peopling old 
houses with the figures of romance. The history read at 
"Glengary" gave place now to the Tales of a Grandfather, 
which he read aloud to an aunt. The reading still seems 
to have been rather compulsory, but in view of the boy's 
future work it was surely seminal. This round of life in 
Charles Town was soon to be interrupted. A fast increas- 
ing reputation as a lawyer and the problem of educating 
his large family determined John Rogers Cooke to remove 
to Richmond. 

The country he was leaving was one of the most remark- 
able spots in what was then perhaps the most romantic 
of the American states. Immigration and nature had com- 
bined to make the region unique. In Clarke and Frederick, 
and the two adjoining counties now in the Eastern pan- 
handle of West Virginia, the German civilization of Penn- 
sylvania stood face to face with the English civilization of 
Virginia. The Germans were the first to come in numbers 
and pushed southward up the fertile valley ; but Lord Fair- 
fax was no less desirous of securing and extending his vast 



EARLY LIFE— CHOOSING A PROFESSION 13 

estate, and actually built Greenway Court to the west of 
the Blue Ridge. Many families from Tidewater joined 
him and even today his old neighborhood, the present county 
of Clarke, partakes of the nature of an East Virginia colony. 
Since the Scotch-Irish had already been disputing the Val- 
ley with the Germans, there were to be met daily in Win- 
chester, Charles Town, and Martinsburg three distinct 
races, all of which are portrayed in Cooke's romances deal- 
ing with the Valley of Virginia. In the days before rail- 
roads the Potomac was one of the great highways to the 
West. Interesting travelers were constantly passing. Cul- 
tured families were found in the river counties, while the 
old border still survived in portions of the Alleghanies. A 
stage trip to some of the more mountainous counties would 
discover cabins where lived men to whom, a few decades 
before, an Indian raid was not a rarity. Cooke's first book, 
Leather Stocking and Silk, derived its title from this con- 
trast as did a later, The Last of the Foresters. Lying as it 
does between the Blue Ridge and the Eastern Alleghanies, 
the Valley of Virginia affords a variety of beautiful scen- 
ery. The sun rises as well as sets over a fine chain of moun- 
tains. Unusual features in the landscape result from the 
calcareous nature of the region. The bee-hive cave in 
Fairfax is surpassed by the actual caverns of Luray. Nu- 
merous ponds and sink-holes mark the fallen roofs of smaller 
caves. The scenery probably did not appreciably affect 
John when he lived in the Valley, but he must have been 
impressed in retrospect when, in his new home, his excur- 
sions and visits took him along the banks of the James, 
through the swampy territory of the Chickahominy, or else- 
where in the Tidewater region. 

The Cookes arrived in Richmond in March, 1840, and 
"lived first in the house below the Capitol Square — one of 
the brick dwellings built by Vial and rented at an enor- 



14 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

mous price." John Rogers Cooke's service as a member 
of the legislature and of the state constitutional convention 
of 1829 had already made him a circle of friends in Rich- 
mond, and his family was hospitably received in that city. 
The centralization of American intellectual life around New 
York had not then begun, nor had the New England literary 
coterie yet risen to overshadowing fame. Boston, New 
York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, and Charleston 
were centers of local culture ; and of these cities Richmond 
was perhaps not the least important. It possessed a much 
larger relative population than does the Richmond of today 
and was the capital of a state which extended to the Ohio 
River. Unfortunately lacking a university, Richmond was 
nevertheless in close touch with the venerable College of 
William and Mary and with the newer University of Vir- 
ginia, the number of whose students was greatly increased 
by the development of sectional ill-will, with the consequent 
dislike of Southern fathers to send their sons to the North- 
ern universities. The city was also visited by the great 
actors of the time and sustained several publications, among 
which was the Southern Literary Messenger, the most 
notable magazine that has yet appeared in the South. 

John Esten's sudden change from the border to the cap- 
ital resulted in a marked intellectual stimulus. He no 
longer needed a bell to summon him to his books. The 
"harum-scarum" became an alert, ambitious student. 
"George and myself were soon sent to the Academy," he 
writes. "I remember distinctly our debut there — dressed 
in black cloth from head to foot, with white straw hats, and 
in profound amazement." The day of his entering this 
school saw the beginning of the most intimate friendship 
of the first half of Cooke's life. Benjamin Watkins Leigh, 
Junior, — a son of an associate of John Esten's father in 
drafting the State Constitution — refused the invitation of 



EARLY LIFE— CHOOSING A PROFESSION 15 

one Richard Heath to "pitch into the little stranger/' en- 
gaged him on the contrary in conversation, liked him, and 
made his path easy. The autobiography refers meagerly 
and in the most general terms to this period, but Cooke at- 
tended Dr. Burke's school as well as the Richmond Acade- 
my. He set down accounts of rambles in the neighboring 
woods, and of swimming trips to the falls of the James, a 
picturesque place soon to be invaded by factories, much to 
the chagrin of the Richmond schoolboys. Weighty problems 
were discussed in boyish letters, and quarrels were adjusted 
in the most solemn fashion. Though all the boys in this 
group practiced target-shooting, there is no evidence that 
they ever regarded their skill as a means of composing their 
differences. John Esten evidently no longer considered girls 
as disagreeable as he once found the "little maidens" of 
the Valley, now considered "nice" in retrospect; for in 
writing his recollections he recalled "so vividly . . . that 
star" of his "youth or rather childhood with her long 
dark curls and tender smile and musical laugh." 

Whatever the school-boys of this period may have done 
occasionally, they apparently found their greatest interest 
in literary societies. Oratory was the forte of the men of 
the old South and it was natural that their sons should emu- 
late them. Cooke carefully preserved the "Records of the 
Proceedings of the Franklin Debating Society" for 1845 
and 1846. This society met first at Burke's School and 
later at the Academy. Its sessions were usually held twice 
a week and at least once on successive days. Young ' ' Wat- 
tie ' ' Leigh stood out as the leader among his friends. After 
serving twice as president he refused reelection, but later 
on heeded the call to a third term in order to save the or- 
ganization which his successor had nearly shipwrecked. 
Young Cooke had taken part in several debates, usually on 
the justification of certain famous executions in history 



16 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

or on the relative merits of certain pairs of virtues, and 
had won as a rule except when pitted against "Wattie." 
He had been defeated for a minor office. His hour of tri- 
umph came, however, in a manner that reflects credit on the 
critical acumen of his fellow members. An essay was read 
once a month, and John Esten made so favorable an im- 
pression with his that it was "resolved that the society 
keep Mr. Cooke's essay." Election of officers came next 
on the order of procedure, and Cooke received a landslide. 
Perhaps the outgoing president wanted to take a last good- 
natured thrust at the future chairman ; perhaps John Esten 
was feeling a bit reckless because of his new honor ; at any 
rate in the remainder of the session, as is solemnly recorded 
in the minutes, "Mr. J. E. Cooke was fined 12y 2 cents 
(once for disturbing the society 6% cents and again for in- 
terrupting Mr. Munford 6}4 cents) " — as many penalties in 
an hour, it seems, as he had hitherto received in his entire 
membership. Cooke's administration was successful and he 
was reelected. When a member resigned "on account of 
the president's arbitrary administration of justice," the 
society accepted the resignation and sustained the chair by 
a unanimous decision. Cooke secured the passage of a 
by-law providing "that if any member run or move faster 
than a walk in the room where the society is holding its 
meetings he shall be fined 6% cents." The usual hour of 
gathering was four or five o'clock in the afternoon, but the 
protracted nature of some of the sessions is shown by the 
requirement (established in a season of long days) that 
each member bring a "whole candle" on the first meeting 
of each month. In an unguarded moment the society 
changed its name to the "Skull and Bones" and spent sev- 
eral dollars in having an anatomical device engraved with 
the constitution upon parchment. The inappropriateness 
of the new name soon became apparent, and on the first 



EARLY LIFE— CHOOSING A PROFESSION 17 

occasion of John's presiding the "S and B" was ordered 
stricken out and Franklin restored. This society touched 
the outside world in maintaining friendly relations with at 
least one similar organization, and in having men of promi- 
nence as honorary members. 

John Esten's success in the literary society would nat- 
urally have suggested a career as a lawyer. Of the South- 
ern Democrats recently prominent in national affairs, many 
are products of these forensic training camps. Oscar Un- 
derwood, John Sharp Williams, and Woodrow Wilson — the 
latter a medalist — were, to mention but one organization 
in one school, nearly contemporary members of the Jeffer- 
son Society of the University of Virginia. But apart from 
the influence of tradition it is not surprising that a boy of 
1845 should have looked to law as an attractive vocation. 
Before the great modern era of business and engineering, 
men of local fame, especially in the eyes of the young or the 
not particularly well informed, were, in times of peace, 
almost always holders of public office. Law in 1845 was 
of course almost a prerequisite to statecraft, and though Vir- 
ginia was becoming less important politically by the mid- 
century, the profession still retained its attractiveness. Fur- 
thermore, John Esten's family environment pointed toward 
law. He revered his lawyer-father, some of whose pro- 
nouncements on topics of the day he recorded in his diaries. 
His brother Philip, ostensibly a lawyer, was unsuccessful 
in Virginia, but, in writing to his father, was the architect 
of air castles in which he figured as a senator from Missouri. 
John Esten Cooke, at approximately the age of sixteen, thus 
began the reading of law under the guidance of his father. 
Consideration was given to the desirability of his going at 
once to the University of Virginia, but it was decided that 
he had best pursue his study privately in order that, when 
he did matriculate, he might graduate in one session. The 



18 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

youth set his heart on entering the law school in the fall 
of 1847, and in August wrote accordingly to his father, 
who was then in the western part of the state on a trip 
combining business with recuperation. The letter caused 
the absent parent much worry, for it found him financially 
unable to provide for a step he greatly approved. 

From an early age John Rogers Cooke exhibited a lack 
of business foresight perhaps surprising in one of his abil- 
ity. His lavish use of his means may be illustrated by his 
treatment of poachers at "Glengary"; he objected strongly 
to their presence, but once they were on his estate he would 
send out to them trays of ham, bread, and wine. In the 
middle forties his younger children were reaching the ex- 
pensive age. Moreover his oldest son now had an increas- 
ing family and was only in part self-supporting. Cooke's 
father had thus been, in spite of his large fees, heavily 
involved in debts by the combination of Richmond life, 
numerous dependents, and reckless generosity. On the 
fifth of September he answered his son's letter, stating 
the lack of funds but expressing the hope that a matricula- 
tion a few weeks later might be arranged for. "I will 
send you to the University as soon as possible. Go you 
shall if God spares my life and health." John did not 
go and two years later almost to a day wrote a similar 
letter in reference to the session of 1849-50. His private 
study had been dragging rather slowly through the two 
years, but he was now hard at work on his books in eager 
anticipation of entering the University. "You seem to have 
commenced the good work," the father replied, "and I 
devotedly hope that you will not fall back into idleness, 
light reading, and frivolous associations." The son was 
reminded that a knowledge of law remained while summer 
friends were ephemeral, and was promised "that nothing 
but the ascertained impossibility of raising the money" 



EARLY LIFE— CHOOSING A PROFESSION 19 

should prevent his being entered at Charlottesville "on or 
soon after, the first of October." This plan likewise fell 
through, and John evidently determined to consider college 
no more. When the family exchequer became able again to 
stand the drain, he withdrew his claim in favor of his 
younger brother Edward. Thus ended his dream of be- 
coming a University man. 

The father's reference to John's frivolous procedure was 
apparently the unjustified utterance of an aging man for- 
getful of his own youth. The "idleness" consisted in at- 
tending speeches, concerts, plays, and everything of an 
intellectual nature that came to Richmond; in keeping in- 
formed on the politics and literature of the day; and in 
frequenting the social gatherings of young men and women 
of his own years and station in life. In a diary minutely 
recording the doings of this year, no entry was made which 
revealed the slightest trace of unbecoming or improper con- 
duct. On the other hand, it would seem only natural that 
the constant holding up before his eyes and sudden with- 
drawal of his cherished desire for a higher education should 
have engendered a certain lack of application. 

Cooke had, however, another excuse. The "light read- 
ing" was Carlyle, Tennyson, Irving, Emerson, Dumas, and 
a score of others in English, American, and French litera- 
ture — names which are today the classics of those who are 
condemning "light reading" still. In fact, the youth was 
careful in his reading, made notes on it, imitated it; was 
seriously beset, withal, by the desire of becoming a man of 
letters. At a very early age he had written an unpreserved 
piece, "The Well of St. Kean," which he always regarded as 
his first original literary work. Cooke was a great lover of 
autumn ; he was ' ' disposed to imagine ' ' that his character 
resembled that ' ' fine and beautiful season, so dreamy, full of 
memories, so warm and cool by turns, ' ' and his second com- 



20 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

position was "some lines on Autumn which Pa liked." The 
year 1849 is very fully recorded in a ledger which combines 
the features of a journal and a commonplace-book, and re- 
veals, much better than his earliest published articles, the 
state of mind of the writer. In this ledger were copied nu- 
merous original poems, as well as imitations of Poe's "To 
One in Paradise," and of several of Tennyson's poems in- 
cluding "The Talking Oak," "Ode to Memory," and "The 
Lotos-Eaters." Cooke also produced a rimed tetrameter 
version of ' ' Tears, Idle Tears, ' ' but found his effort rather 
unsatisfactory. The passing away of Poe affected him pro- 
foundly, and called forth several crude pieces lamenting the 
lost genius. Most of these early efforts are somber. Virginia 
is described as a land of lost ideals, of a fallen generation un- 
worthy of being mentioned in the same breath with its an- 
cestors. The youth wrote of "vain aspirings" and "vainer 
labor, ' ' and discovered that ' ' the soil of life ' ' was ' ' barren. ' ' 
Like other dreamers in different ages, the young Vir- 
ginian yearned for a panacea in some far off country with 
a euphonic name. Just as Southey and his group looked 
longingly to the banks of the Susquehanna, Cooke, living 
near the ocean outlet of that river, looked in turn three 
thousand miles to the West — to California. The idea of 
going thither dominated his mind during the year 1849. 
The Coleridgean plan of taking along a wife also received 
rimed consideration. "Wattie" Leigh transferred a sim- 
ilar enthusiasm into action, for he went to California, where 
he died a few years later. Any excessive ardor on Cooke's 
part must, however, have been well discouraged by his 
father, who is recorded as having said, apropos of the "vast 
desert" and the "mountains above the clouds" which "sep- 
erated" [sic] the East from the far West: "A strange 
madness seems to have seized the country. This railroad to 



EARLY LIFE— CHOOSING A PROFESSION 21 

the Pacific will really be built. And for what? Why to 
drain our very vital blood, our men and money into another 
country which nature has unchangeably forbidden to be 
a part of the United States." 

Cooke's life-long chivalric courtesy toward ladies was al- 
ready being mistaken for affection, as he complains, but he 
wrote a goodly number of love-poems. He produced these 
effusions literally by the stop-watch, often recording the 
number of minutes required for a certain composition; 
hence the requirements of rime largely dictated the phrase- 
ology, and he was a ready victim for such conventional 
phrases as "eyes like stars" and "golden hair." But the 
poems reflect only one side of his intellectual life. He was 
not always experiencing "a bitter joy" or a "blissful pain." 
In addition to the attention to law, referred to in connec- 
tion with his education, he was writing critiques of drama 
and music, taking notes from William Wirt on effective 
oratory, and unconsciously gathering from observation the 
materials for Ellie and certain of the Richmond scenes in 
Surry and Mohun. As the year 1849 differed little from 
those immediately preceding, it differed less from 1850. 
Cooke's lack of mental industry worried him. "Throw your 
soul into the drudgery, then it is not toil," he advised him- 
self in his journal. The deaths of Philip in January, 1850, 
and of his mother later in the year may have completely 
unsettled him for a time. Such an effect was surely pro- 
duced later by other deaths in his family. Leigh remon- 
strated with him about his gloominess. The year's chief 
literary advance came from a visit to the Berkeley Springs, 
where he took delight in certain old hunters whom he de- 
scribed as pure English with the soul of John Smith. The 
contrast between these men with their guns and the inn 
guests with their canes suggested a comparison of manners 
combined several years later with much else to make Leather 



22 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

Stocking and Silk, which was his first publication in book 
form. 

The 1849 diary and commonplace book indicated Cooke's 
strong yearning toward the profession of letters. He was 
amply justified, however, in his constant misgivings about 
following his literary bent, for he knew that he would have 
to be responsible for his entire support as soon as possi- 
ble, and he must have known how pitifully hard it was for 
a Southern writer to earn a livelihood. Cooke became later 
perhaps the best paid Southern man of letters before 1870, 
yet, however much the youth may have believed in his 
talent, the future must have seemed dark. But it was easy 
to begin writing. There were few writers in the South 
then in comparison Avith the number in the North, the 
number in the South who with pen and ink sought food 
or justification after Appomattox, and the number every- 
where now. And writers were really needed. Virginia 
was studded with newspapers many of which ran magazine 
features, and all of which required numerous special cor- 
respondents in default of the service of the modern news 
agencies. The writers of these communications occasionally 
received slight compensation, but usually none. The con- 
stantly precarious condition of Southern periodicals was 
due chiefly to poorly paying subscribers. It is indeed re- 
markable that so many gentlemen of the old regime should 
have considered it unimportant to pay for a book or maga- 
zine they had subscribed for. Perhaps books and maga- 
zines were regarded as, in the last analysis, mere " scraps 
of paper." In any case the delinquency of supposed pa- 
trons constantly imperiled and assisted in snuffing out the 
periodical ventures of Southern editors. Even John Rogers 
Cooke, an honest, sober, lovable gentleman, was years be- 
hind in his subscription to the Southern Literary Messenger 
when his son's contributions served as payment. Know- 



EARLY LIFE— CHOOSING A PROFESSION 23 

ing the difficulties which would beset his path, John Esten 
Cooke, for eight years after his sixteenth year, withheld 
a full devotion to the profession of letters. He attempted 
in this indecision between law and literature the difficult 
dual role which had proved so disastrous to the success and 
happiness of his brother Philip. 

In this hesitation between two careers, one galling but 
probably profitable, the other agreeable but of little finan- 
cial promise, Cooke's better energies went into his literary 
efforts. At the age of eighteen he achieved the dignity of 
print. "Avalon," a poem which appeared in the Messenger 
for November, 1848, seems to have been his first published 
article, and was followed in the next five years by a number 
of unsigned or pseudonymous pieces. This early work was 
not paid for, and Cooke justly never regarded it as pro- 
fessional; it merely afforded him the training available 
to-day through college magazines. The ease with which he 
secured a publisher, while it was an impetus to further com- 
position, was detrimental to his artistic development. Many 
of his less worthy efforts were accepted quite as readily as 
his best, and he was soon ominously on the road to an 
amazing productivity accompanied by an unfortunate dis- 
taste for revision. 

Cooke's early articles were of many types, and some of 
them showed promise. In January, 1849, appeared the 
prettily phrased, metrically correct "Eighteen Sonnets." 
Each sonnet has a humorous twist, and is followed by a 
prose paragraph pointing out its merit in a manner that 
suggests a burlesque on some of the copiously edited modern 
editions of poems. Cooke left no record of any share he may 
have had in writing the short book notices which appeared 
in the Messenger. That he was a conscientious, capable 
critic, however, is shown by his "Thomas Carlyle and his 
'Latter-Day Pamphlets,' " which appeared in the Mes- 



24 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

senger in June, 1850. In clear, fluent language he sums 
up the points made by Carlyle whom he considers to have 
''crowned the column of political extravagance. . . . 
Thomas Carlyle is now the head reformer of the age with 
a perfectly distinct political theory of his own, and is soon, 
we predict, to found a school of politics in England which 
shall re-echo his wild doctrines. It ought to be called Car- 
lyleism, for no other word will express it [sic] principles 
so well. ... In these papers, as throughout his entire 
works, Carlyle, the man, stands prominent — a bold, earnest, 
inflexible, conscientious thinker ! . . . Whatever Carlyle ad- 
vances, the world may take as his earnest true belief." 
The sonnet "To Kossuth" reflects the author's interest in 
international affairs as well as affords a sample of his poetic 
skill at this period: 

TO KOSSUTH 

O Kossuth, noble Kossuth ! could the tears 

Of nations shed for thee enlarge thy fame 
From Schumla's prison, which, through coming years, 

Shall stand the monument of Hapsburg's shame, 
Thine eagle eye, before to-morrow's sun, 

Would once more turn to thy dear Hungary 
Far in the West, where shuddering upon 

Her mountain's rugged rim the sunsets die. 
That eye of fire! Oh may it once again 

Inspire the mailed breasts of serried hosts, 
And flush ten thousand brows with proud disdain 

Of Austrian tyranny's vainglorious boasts. 
May once more wave thy fiery plume on high — 

A morning star to night-steeped Hungary! 

While balancing law and literature and producing short 
articles, Cooke had found time to write two romances, The 
Knight of Espalion and Evan of Foix. The Knight of 
Espalion was written in the summer of 1847. "My first 
story and I think it pretty good," Cooke said of it years 



EARLY LIFE— CHOOSING A PROFESSION 25 

later. This story, which has attracted attention because of 
the extreme youth of its author, was never published in 
book form, and did not find its way into the Messenger 
until 1860 when it was run as a serial from July to October. 
Much of Cooke's best work had appeared by 1860, so he 
wisely published the resurrected manuscript anonymously; 
it could have added nothing to his reputation. The story 
is without plot; it merely recounts certain adventures 
which befall Raoul d'Espalion, a companion in arms to the 
Viscount of Beziers. At the very beginning there is intro- 
duced in detail a troubadour to whom no further reference 
is made. An entire chapter is devoted to the love of Raoul 
for his cousin, but the topic is not again mentioned. On 
the whole, The Knight of Espalion gives the impression of 
being the first third of an unfinished story. Cooke was 
fascinated by the sonorous names of the Midi, and led his 
hero through nearly every town of importance. Except 
for a description of the wonderful Gothic portal of the 
Church of St. Gilles there is, however, not a trace of local 
color, and when Cooke glories in the autumn weather he 
obviously has in mind Virginia and not Southern France. 
The proof sheets of this story must never have come under 
the author's eye, for mistakes abound; to mention just a 
few, the river Aude is sometimes called the Ande, while the 
Ariege appears as the Aniege. 

Evan of Foix, which was suggested by the Froissart Bal- 
lads of Philip and in particular by Cooke's reading of 
Dumas 's Agenor de Mauleon, was begun in the fall of 1847 
and finished the following spring. It was never published 
as a unit, but was "cut" into two parts, each of which 
appeared serially, unsigned, in the Messenger. The Last 
Days of Gaston Phoebus, A Chronicle Not Found in Messire 
Jehan Froissart ran from October, 1854, to January, 1855, 
and A Kingdom Mortgaged appeared monthly from May 



26 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

to September in the latter year. In scene, manner, and 
characters the Evan of Foix stories differ little from The 
Knight of Espalion. Their publication seems to have 
aroused no stir. In fact, mechanically, they may actually 
have caused their readers some annoyance ; for Gaston Phoe- 
bus is ended with the cryptic note, "The sequel to the events 
just narrated, is properly reserved for another occasion," 
while the "to be continued" or "to be concluded" was 
thrice left off the installments of A Kingdom Mortgaged. 
These stories have slight kinship if any with the author's 
novels of the following decade. For his next fiction of 
book length Cooke turned from a distant century and a 
far-off unknown land to the very Virginia border which as 
a child he knew from observation and tradition. 

Cooke may have given some attention to the private study 
of law in 1850, for his long and uncongenial apprenticeship 
was soon to be merged into constantly irksome and unsuc- 
cessful practice. "On the 27th of February [1851]," he 
recorded in his diary, ' ' I hung out my sign — or rather mine 
and Pa's, for it runs 'John R. Cooke & Jno. Esten Cooke: 
Law Office ' — at a cost of two dollars, and yesterday Brown 
offered me two cases. ' ' A later entry says : " I commenced 
the practice of law on the first day of March." Perhaps 
Cooke qualified that day, since his entry for March 2 refers 
to his fulfilling this requirement without embarrassment 
though he was, as he puts it, the "observed of all observers." 
His first case came in April and he spoke for three quarters 
of an hour, receiving the approval of friends present, but 
not pleasing himself. The dread of losing his poise must 
have obsessed him, for he again with satisfaction recalls 
his calmness. Law became even more irksome to the lawyer 
than it had been to the student. Because of his desultory, 
unguided study Cooke now felt imperatively the need of 
continual application. He resolved on this again and again, 



EARLY LIFE— CHOOSING A PROFESSION 27 

but always failed. For twelve months after his admittance 
to the bar, he vowed to quit writing, but could not. Writ- 
ing and smoking went hand in hand and he condemned 
them together. Such passages as the following abound 
in his journal: "I do not study (law). My mind is thor- 
oughly dissipated, and I only dream and scheme like an 
oriental without doing anything. Tobacco is partly the 
cause and that knocks in the head all calm, quiet applica- 
tion as completely as opium. I am alternately raised to 
the heavens and sunk into a horrible depression of spirits. 
I am ridiculous in my thoughts, irrational in my calcula- 
tions, start at the least sudden noise, and magnify every 
molehill into a mountain, into an Alps. My whole life is 
alternately a train of dreamy, delightful reveries, under the 
effect of coffee and tobacco after breakfast, and, when that 
effect is worn off, of depressed foreboding misery. Now 
I swear to change all this. I cannot at once give up to- 
bacco, more especially when going to the country where 
there is so much idleness. But on my return, with the 
assistance of God, I will throw this present life to the dogs. 
I will be fixed in my room and I will study law, history and 
the modern languages. I will discipline my mind and 
throw 'general literature' to the devil. I will smoke mod- 
erately and never write. . . . But also I will never scheme 
out literary undertakings. Tobacco makes me irritable. . . . 
I will never more be so completely under its influence. 
With the first day of January 1852 I commence a new life 
ab initio. May God give me strength to keep my resolution." 
Many circumstances combined to render impossible a 
strict adherence to this proposed regimen. In the first 
place Cooke allowed himself such loopholes as "in modera- 
tion," and invariably decided to begin his severe self- 
discipline not directly but at some future date — in this 
case after twenty-eight days. In his abnegations he always 



28 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

allowed himself society as a necessity, and society at this 
period of his life led to serenades, suppers with young men 
at the hotels, soda water with girl cousins, and the opera. 
These diversions afforded material for description, but did 
not further a knowledge of law. Such of his friends as 
remembered the old Franklin Debating Society days ad- 
vised him to be an out-and-out man of letters. The little 
daughters of Philip, to whom he wrote often on pretty note 
paper and sent many presents, wanted most of all to read 
something else written by their "dear, dear uncle." And 
if the prospects of a support by his pen were chimerical, 
he would at least have less aggressive competition in writ- 
ing than in law, and he had made an approved start. He 
was already one of the mainstays of the Messenger, and 
edited the March, 1851, number for John Reuben Thompson. 

Thompson and Cooke were intimate associates at this 
time ; they visited the river islands, walked again and again 
across the Danville bridge, and were invited together to 
country homes. One of Thompson 's most interesting poems 
is "A Letter," addressed to his friend who was enjoying 
the country in August, 1852, while the editor sweltered in 
Richmond. The question of pay for Cooke's articles seems, 
nevertheless, to have been a delicate one. Cooke felt that 
if his productions were good enough for the Messenger to 
print by the dozen they ought to be worth something. "If 
he expects me to write for him forever he's mistaken — 
without some remuneration. I like him, however, and shall 
avoid any quarrel, which I do not anticipate but am- ready 
for." "I want money most confoundedly and Thompson 
is or says he is so poor that all hope from that quarter is 
gone." 

As time went on, Cooke's vows to cease writing became 
more and more vehement but were the more easily broken. 
Finally he allowed himself to write when on visits, then 



EARLY LIFE— CHOOSING A PROFESSION 29 

short pieces in Richmond, and soon, even in Richmond, 
longer articles the composition of which produced no nerv- 
ous excitement. He had, meanwhile, begun to seek recogni- 
tion in the North. He had met and had been encouraged 
by Rufus W. Griswold, who contemplated an edition of the 
"Works" of Philip. Submitting a paper on Poe, 1 whom he 
had heard as a lecturer and knew as a gossiped-about figure 
of note in the city, he had tried for, anticipated, and failed 
to receive one of Sartain 's prizes. A letter to the editor of 
Godey's brought the reply that the magazine had enough 
manuscripts on hand "for two years." The Harpers, how- 
ever, accompanied a rejection with a courteous intimation 
of willingness to see other pieces. Cooke began a story at 
once. "This is not breaking my resolution," he concluded, 
"I always excepted writing for pay." A few weeks later 
the following entry was made in the journal: "On the 
10th of March [1852] I received from Harper and Bros. 
$10 for 'Barry and Courtlandt the Tall,' the first money 
I ever got for fiction 2 writing." This was the price which 
Cooke had set upon the manuscript. He received it at a 
time when it assisted his sick father, a circumstance which 
he always considered of good omen. Thompson also was 
willing to pay when forced to the wall. The next entry 
in the diary records that he took "Peony" at $1.50 a page. 
Cooke became thus, almost in spite of himself, a profes- 
sional man of letters. 

i Edgar Allan Poe went to Richmond in 1849 "to deliver his lec- 
ture on 'The Poetic Principle' which I had the pleasure of hearing. 
The lecturer stood in a graceful attitude, leaning one hand on a 
small table beside him, and his wonderfully clear and musical voice 
speedily brought the audience under its spell." — J. E. C. in his 
journal. 

2 The use of the word "fiction" does not imply that Cooke had 
received pay for other 1 forms of composition; he had, however, be- 
cause of his excellent penmanship, earned money as a copyist. 



CHAPTER II 
GENTLEMAN AND NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 

When John Reuben Thompson bought the Southern Lit- 
erary Messenger in the fall of 1847, he announced in the 
October number that he would continue the practice of 
law. In 1852 Cooke entertained a similar idea, but, like 
Thompson, dismissed it in a very short time. In these days 
of his dwindling neglected practice he received from David 
Strother a good-natured taunting letter of congratulation 
on a supposed fee of a thousand dollars. Apparently the 
last trace of Cooke's legal career came a few years later 
when Derby and Jackson, publishers of The Last of the 
Foresters, asked him to act as their attorney in a case in- 
volving the failure of a Richmond bookseller. The definite 
assumption of a literary career produced little change in 
Cooke's life. As he grew older and better known, he nat- 
urally figured more largely in the intellectual circles of 
Richmond ; but, because of the salability of his writings and 
his varied duties, he nearly neglected his journal. In fact 
he expressly states that for three years in the late fifties he 
kept no record whatever of his thoughts and performances. 
Enough information is available, however, to prevent any 
interruption in the continuity of his life-story. 

Cooke's sisters had already married when his mother died 
in 1850 ; so the father relinquished the house he had been 
occupying and became a roomer and boarder. "The Clif- 
ton" was for some time the joint home of the father and 
son, but much of the latter 's work at this time was done in 

30 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 31 

a quiet room set aside for his use by Mammy Giddy in 
her house in "Gullination," a low section of Richmond. 
John Esten later occupied quarters on Eleventh Street at 
"Goddin's," a rooming-house which subsequently housed 
the Confederate States Post Office. He also spent some 
time at the Richmond home of the Duvals, the family into 
which his sister Sal had married. 

Cooke 's work in the fifties was interrupted by no serious 
illness, but he was often troubled with a provoking neural- 
gia of the teeth, a worry from which he was destined never 
to be free. He complained also of a nervousness which he 
fortunately outgrew as time went on. His use of tobacco 
no longer prompted such violent resolutions, but letters 
from members of his family still counseled moderation, 
lest he inflict upon himself "some organic disease." In his 
early twenties Cooke wore for a time a full beard and ' ' long 
cavalier hair." Describing this in his journal he complains 
terribly of heat, the most patent advantage of being a 
roundhead seeming never to have occurred to him. He sub- 
sequently reduced his beard to the mustache and imperial 
which he wore in later life. 

Among Cooke's papers there is a memorandum giving a 
detailed expense account for the year 1852. From this it 
may be learned that he was a subscriber to the Richmond 
Dispatch, bought the first two monthly numbers of Bleak 
House, bought an occasional Harper's, which he would 
later send to friends in the Valley, and attended the theatre 
some twenty times. His greatest dissipation of the year 
was occasioned by a visit to Richmond of the well-known 
theatrical family, the Batemans. He saw them perform 
more than a half-dozen times, bought bonbons for the child- 
actresses, and finally purchased a picture of them in The 
Young Couple. The gifts to "Mammy" totaled $4.65 for 
nine months. Some of the items are humorous as well as 



32 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

autobiographical, for example: "mint juleps... 25, cursed 
folly." Such entries, however, were not numerous, those 
for drink totaling much less than those for tobacco, while 
the latter amounted to only some six or seven dollars for 
the nine months spent in Richmond. Cooke perhaps drank 
more at Christmas time than usual as the following "memo" 
would suggest: "In drinking sweet drinks, 'bottom' with 
grog and 'top off' with the same. I did last night and am 
fresh as a lark: decidedly important mem. about Xmas." 
The year's expenses totaled four hundred and eighty-five 
dollars. "Is it possible?" Cooke asks. "But old board 
and new clothes make it : and so it is no fair exhibit of my 
expenditure. A new leaf this 1853!" 

Cooke's Christmases and summers were usually spent 
with relatives or friends living near the Valley home of 
his childhood. He seems to have gone every October to 
visit in Amelia County the Stegers, the marriage family 
of his sister Mary. In these journeys and visits he was ex- 
tending the knowledge of Virginia which he had begun to 
acquire in boyhood from stories told by his father and had 
later developed by eager and wide study. All his experi- 
ences afforded subjects for the numerous articles he was 
now producing. Historical narratives, as well as fictitious 
ones, were based on his well-loved History of the Valley of 
Virginia by Kercheval, supplemented by a first-hand knowl- 
edge of the lower Valley. The familiarity with Fairfax 
and Washington family history and legend served as a 
basis for "Early Haunts of Washington," in the New York 
Times, for the handsomely illustrated "Greenway Court" 
which was featured in Putnam's for June, 1857, and for 
a romance which ran as a serial in the Messenger and was 
later issued in book form as Fairfax. A journey from 
Richmond to the Valley by the water route resulted in a 
sonnet, "Sunset on the Chesapeake." "For my trip to 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 33 

Amelia," he wrote in his soon to be neglected diary, "see 
'A Handful of Autumn Leaves' in the December [1852] 
Messenger." The article here referred to was a collection 
of seven short easy-chair essays: "In the Woods," "Some 
Authors and Books," "Embers of a Wood Fire," "Old 
and New Songs, " " Sunlight, Winds and Music, " " The En- 
thusiastic Sportsman," "The End of Autumn" — titles 
which illustrate the turn Cooke's talent was taking at this 
period. He was fond of historical fact, but he liked to 
contemplate it in terms of romance. He was not only a 
literary critic but a critic of manners who saw in the past 
fine ideals which had been sadly departed from. This theme 
afforded him the material for several magazine articles ; his 
first contribution to Putnam's (August, 1853) actually 
bore the title, "Virginia Past and Present." Exceedingly 
modern seems "Minuet and Polka" with its reference to 
the "arm around the waist, the breath upon the cheek, the 
head upon the shoulder." The author, of course, presents 
a brief for the old-fashioned dance: "The minuet was 
delicacy, courtesy, lofty-toned respect — in one word — 
chivalry." Cooke was a skilful literary parodist. He was 
the author of the "Unpublished Mss. from the Portfolios 
of the Most Celebrated Authors. By Motley Ware, Esq.," 
which the Duyckinck brothers published in the Literary 
World during 1853. Along with the burlesques of Carlyle, 
Dumas, and others Cooke solemnly included one of himself, 
or rather of such of his work as had appeared under his 
pseudonym, "Pen Ingleton, Esq." With unerring instinct 
he chose as a likely subject his great fondness for autumn : 
"The flutter and glitter of the golden autumn leaves are 
once more in my eyes and in my heart." 

In addition to his abundant and varied work for periodi- 
cals, Cooke began toward the close of 1852 his first serious 
effort as a novelist. Leather Stocking and Silk; or, Hunter 



34 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

John Myers and his Times. A Story of the Valley of Vir- 
ginia 1 was finished the following spring and its author, 
having gone in May as far as New York with "Wattle" 
Leigh on the latter 's way to California, arranged with the 
Harpers for its publication. Cooke experienced keen joy 
in correcting the proof, which he received in Virginia in 
driblets; but when the book was on the eve of its appear- 
ance the Harper fire destroyed everything except a stereo- 
typed impression preserved in a vault. The author first 
learned of the fire from the New York Times — which of 
course did not print a list of the contents of the vault — 
and despairingly believed that his labor had been in vain. 
The Harper presses were soon going again, however, and 
the summer of 1854 saw the appearance of Leather Stock- 
ing and Silk. 

Irving was the literary grand old man of Cooke's youth, 
and Leather Stocking and Silk owes him more than a little. 
Contemporary American critics seem not to have noticed 
this debt to the author of the Sketch-Book, but the London 
Athenaeum referred to it and Cooke admitted it. The 
names of several important characters are Dutch. The 
style of the book is Irvingesque, particularly in passages 
which contrast the old with the new in the life of the Vir- 
ginia border. Many of the chapters are little more than 
genial "familiar" essays wholly unnecessary for the ad- 
vance of the plot. The Cooper influence was more obvious 
but less subtle. The " Leatherstocking Tales" suggested the 
title, and as a border tale the novel belongs to the school 
in which Cooper holds primacy. 

This initial volume exemplifies Professor Brander Mat- 
thews 's statement that an author, in his first book, tries to 
tell everything he knows. Cooke himself says of the genesis 
of Leather Stocking and Silk: "The story was suggested 

1 In, this and other titles, Cooke's punctuation has been retained. 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 35 

by my father's account of old Hunter John Myers, whom 
'he had known — and I worked into it the scenes of Barry; 
old traditions I had heard of some people playing cards 
on a tombstone of the old Martinsburg Church, seizing and 
fleeing on a fine mare of my grandfather Pendleton, etc. 
In drawing Max, Jr., I had my dear Buck Lyons in mind, 
and M. Pantoufle was Pa's fencing master, M. Xaupi." 
The student of Cooke's life can see clearly the sources of 
many other elements of the book. It shows a kinship with 
his magazine essays and stories. In the case of the "Scenes 
of Barry" the adaptation was so complete that Cooke 
"bought back" from the Harpers the article for which he 
had first received pay. The Bateman children inspired 
the theatrical scene in which little Sally plays a star part. 
The long speech of the old negro woman is a tribute to 
Cooke's negro "mammy." The career of the elder Max, 
who goes away from the Valley and returns to it a dis- 
tinguished man, parallels in part that of his creator. A 
fondness for Richter, expressed in the autobiography, is 
seen in the chapter named for that writer. Some of Cooke's 
own poems are interpolated as the compositions of one of 
the characters. 

Leather Stocking and Silk is, in spite of its scant four 
hundred pages, divided into three parts and ninety-five 
chapters. As might be expected from such a structure and 
the heterogeneity of sources, the plot — here sketched in 
briefest outline — is somewhat weak. Maximilian Courtlandt 
is in love with his cousin, Nina Von Horn, who, however, 
marries a solemn, self-important but promising lawyer 
named Lyttleton. Max has a small brother, Barry, who 
loves Sally, the little daughter of Hunter John. Five years 
elapse. Max returns from Paris a doctor of medicine and 
goes everywhere in the neighborhood, but no one knows 
him until he chooses to reveal his identity. Barry marries 



36 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

Sally Myers, and Max marries Nina, now a consolable 
widow of two years' standing. Twenty years pass. Nina 
has died and Max marries Miss Josephine Emberton, whom 
he knew in his youth. Barry now has two daughters, one 
of whom marries a brother of Miss Emberton, the other 
marrying Max, Jr., Max's only son. Hunter John, who 
remembers the Indians, and M. Pantoufle, the dancing- 
master, come through the three parts without matrimonial 
entanglements and die at the end. Such a frame-work 
could hardly be the basis of a great composition, but Leather 
Stocking and Silk possessed some real merits which pointed 
to better subsequent work. The easy, graceful, flowing 
style is little inferior to the author 's best achievement. The 
book has a certain value as social history. Some of the 
conversations sparkle ; they are essentially transcripts from 
life, as may be seen from actual conversations recorded in 
the diaries. Cooke prided himself upon the accuracy of his 
delineation of Hunter John, who saw the pines cut down 
to make the main street of Martinsburg, and yet lived to 
see a polite society, with its appurtenances and conventions, 
press forward upon the receding frontier. Even then on 
the border were met the characters Cooke loved best to 
draw: "elegantly dressed ladies, radiant with rich falling 
lace, and supporting on their white foreheads curiously 
fashioned towers of hair; gracefully attentive gentlemen 
with powdered locks, stiff-collared coats, and silk stockings 
and knee-buckles." Not even Barry — ill-tempered young 
bully that he is — can dissipate the atmosphere of kindliness 
which pervades the entire composition, and reflects the tem- 
perament of the genial author, who says "to the reader:" 
"If the book be found entertaining and (above all else) 
the spirit of it pure, the writer will be more than satisfied." 
The first of these wishes was perhaps not realized. Leather 
Stocking and Silk split in halves the great decade which 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 37 

began with Vanity Fair and ended with Adam Bede; but 
Cooke, unlike his fellow-countryman Hawthorne, did not 
share largely in the great novel-writing power then abroad 
in the English-speaking world. Fitting it is, however, that 
the second wish should have been expressed in the preface 
of his first book. It was fulfilled to the letter. In a score 
of novels and hundreds of shorter compositions he did not 
make use of an impure word or situation. 

When Leather Stocking and Silk was accepted by the 
Harpers, its author at once began another frontier romance 
which dealt with figures of such historical importance as 
the sixth Lord Fairfax and the youthful George Washing- 
ton. The historical period of the new work antedated that 
of the first novel by about fifty years, and for his back- 
ground Cooke relied abundantly upon Kercheval. Fairfax, 
as the book was eventually called, bears as a border ro- 
mance a kinship to Leather Stocking and Silk, and as a 
colonial romance points to the author's third book, The 
Virginia Comedians. The germ of the latter so fascinated 
Cooke that he dropped the nearly finished Fairfax in the 
fall of 1853 and devoted himself to the more newly con- 
ceived work. The abandoned novel was completed in May, 
1858, and was published in the Messenger from April to 
December the following year as Greenway Court; or, The 
Bloody Ground. With very slight changes the serial was 
issued in volume form by Carleton in 1868 under the 
title of Fairfax: or, The Master of Greenway Court. A 
Chronicle of the Valley of the Shenandoah. 

Cooke left no record of exactly how much of Fairfax was 
yet to be done when he first laid it aside, but it is probable 
that the very dramatic conclusion was written later. The 
work is markedly more entertaining than Leather Stocking 
and Silk and is a not wholly unworthy forerunner of The 
Virginia Comedians. A youthful love-affair of Washing- 



38 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

ton, who found time to survey the maidens as well as the 
earl's domain; the ensnaring by a "Lamia" of Falcon- 
bridge and Fairfax, who turn out to be son and father; 
the prowess and the courting of a robust "Injun "-hating 
Captain Wagner: these are the ingredients of the plot. 
The denouement is precipitated by an Indian raid and a re- 
prisal imitated closely from The Last of the Mohicans. Here, 
as in Cooper's tale, death solves the problem of the noble 
red youth who loves beyond the bounds of his race. There 
is, too, an exceedingly fascinating woman, a combination on 
a more refined plane of Judith and Hetty Hutter; though, 
unfortunately, Bertha Argal's insanity is narrated rather 
than actually depicted. To the unsuspecting reader, she is 
merely rather witchingly endowed with "those wiles which 
it is the sad misfortune of woman to possess," as she her- 
self states after the author finally declares her criminally in- 
sane. An epilogue handles effectively a scene in which the 
aged Fairfax learns shortly before his death that his for- 
mer protege, "that curly-pate," has destroyed British 
dominion in Virginia. A great weakness of Cooke's his- 
torical fiction is in Fairfax seen for the first time. In treat- 
ing actual persons he does not always distinguish between 
what might have happened and what is generally known 
not to have happened. He discredits the essential historical 
truth of his narrative by giving a son to the bachelor 
Fairfax. 

The annual state fair held in Richmond about the first 
of November has long been a rather notable occasion for 
the people of the city and the state. In 1853 the event was 
of much more than usual significance for John Esten 
Cooke. A full-fledged author now, patronized by the Har- 
pers, he attended the fair with Thompson and Paul Hayne, 
the latter being on a visit from Charleston. But the crown- 
ing event was the presence of the Batemans, whose pre- 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 39 

vious visits Cooke remembered most pleasantly, since he had 
known intimately the little actresses who had afforded "the 
very atmosphere in which the adventures of Max were 
shaped." Bateman was, as usual, most cordial to Cooke 
and invited him to dine. "Kate and Ellen remembered me 
spite of the ten thousand faces they have since seen . . . 
children will not stay children : the little girls are taller, 
their faces less round and infantile, their acting less the 
vagary of children. Well, so be it : but one great and happy 
change I observed in Kate. At those unworthy double- 
entendres in the Young Couple she did not smile . . . and 
seemed to be ashamed . . . went through the part with 
manifest repugnance. Poor child! She is getting old 
enough to feel as an incipient woman the unworthy part 
she plays. Thank heaven for it and may they both soon 
leave the stage and become children again." Cooke went 
to see them often. He carried them "little cologne kegs," 
candy, and books. "I am in love with Kate, the charming 
little rascal with the bright eyes and curls, and sharp talk, 
too!" Cooke even spoke to the father about the advisa- 
bility of the girls' discontinuing their stage careers. Bate- 
man assured him of an intention to settle within a year on 
a place he owned near Cincinnati, but his declared inten- 
tion was distrusted by Cooke, — justly, as events proved. 

The idea of making literary use of Kate Bateman and 
her profession was first suggested by a paragraph which 
Cooke clipped from the odds-and-ends column of a news- 
paper, and later pasted in his scrapbook: "The first play 
performed in America by a regular company of commedians 
[sic] was the 'Merchant of Venice,' at "Williamsburg, the 
capital of Virginia, on the 5th of September, 1762 [sic]. The 
commedians under the management of Mr. Hallam 1 em- 

i The Hallam here referred to was Lewis, a brother of the English 
theatrical manager, William Hallam. Lewis Hallam's company be- 



40 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

barked in the Charming Sally, Capt. Lee, early in the month 
of May of that year, and after a voyage of six weeks, a short 
passage in those days, arrived safely in Yorktown, Vir- 
ginia." Some of these statements are not true, of course, 
but the clipping served to connect Cooke 's dominant interest 
in Kate Bateman with the Colonial period which he had 
long worshiped and was already ambitiously preparing to 
treat historically. His visualization of Kate Bateman as a 
heroine took the author back into the past with a dashing 
enthusiasm which made The Virginia Comedians by far 
the finest of his books. 

A few days after seeing the seminal paragraph, Cooke 
"constructed the whole story" of The Virginia Comedians. 
"It only remains to do the mechanical part," he wrote in 
his journal. He was advancing slowly, when on December 
23 a letter from the Harpers announced that the plates of 
Leather Stocking and Silk had been saved. "Hurrah!" he 
wrote, ' ' I trusted in Providence and am repaid. ' ' He threw 
away his three-page false start and, beginning anew with 
a vigor which never abated, finished the first book at eleven 
o'clock at night on February 8, 1854, and the entire work 
by March 3. He found great joy in his labor. "The Vir- 
ginia Comedians has stopped this journal — never have I 
worked so hard. I have done 100 pages a day repeatedly." 1 
He also realized that he was producing a notable composi- 
tion. "Mr. Effingham and Beatrice are what I wanted them 
to be, and I have developed their characters to my satisfac- 
tion. The incidents are full of dramatic effect — Charles's 

gan its American career with "The Merchant of Venice" at Williams- 
burg, September 5, 1752. For interesting details, see William 
Dunlap, by Oral Sumner Coad. (New York, The Dunlap Society, 
1917.) 

i Throughout his life Cooke preferred to write upon sheets of paper 
about five by eight inches. 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 41 

colloquies with Henry among my best writing. Lanky and 
Mr. Crow are developed to my satisfaction and the penulti- 
mate chapter is to my taste — I doubted about it as I did 
about killing Beatrice. But the book had to end with an 
idea : and death crowns her. . . . The book will hit I think 
if ever published. ... It is my best work." 

Cooke's pride was justified and his intense application 
was rewarded. The Virginia Comedians: or, Old Days in 
the Old Dominion was published in two volumes by D. 
Appleton and Company in 1854, and was several times re- 
printed. Since 1916 it has been out of print, but it deserves 
to be kept alive. It should be neglected by no serious stu- 
dent of American fiction. It is of value to the social his- 
torian, is interesting to the student of the early American 
theater, and should prove fascinating to those who take 
delight in things pre-Revolutionary. At the opening of 
the thirty-second chapter of the second book Cooke states 
that he "aims at presenting in a brief and rapid manner, 
some view, however slight, of the various classes of individ- 
uals who formed that Virginia of 1765. ' ' This inclusion of 
"various classes" marked a decided advance in Virginia 
fiction, the writers of which had seen in Colonial Virginia 
chiefly cavaliers and servants. The low-class characters 
are not, however, successfully drawn. They either are 
meagerly sketched, lack the appearance of reality, or are 
portrayed merely in a subordinate relation to some superior 
person. Cooke was never skilful in his delineation of the 
negro. With the exception of Mr. Crow, an uncommon type, 
negroes serve in The Virginia Comedians almost solely as 
bridle-rein receivers for dismounting "cavaliers." 

With these reservations Cooke achieved his aims notably. 
The middle-class Waters family is well portrayed. The 
upper part of society is brilliantly depicted. The bluff old 
head of Effingham Hall, known everywhere as a prime aris- 



42 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

tocrat, slouches and hobnobs as he pleases with no loss of 
dignity, but expects all views to take color from his : " Every- 
man a vote! Who speaks of it? Who broaches such an 
absurdity?" His interlocutor hastens to say "a parcel of 
hair-brained [sic] young men," and diverts the storm from 
his OAvn head, though not preventing it entirely. The Hall 
also shelters the prim and precise Miss Alethea, who, though 
a severe censor of others, is none the less staging a sub-rosa 
romance of her own, as she hastens to explain when she is 
discovered in the act of kissing. The Squire's younger 
son, a budding duplicate of his father, industriously courts 
his twelve-year-old first cousin, an orphan now adopted into 
the family. 

The eldest son is the hero or villain of the first volume of 
the book. Champ Effingham is just back from the "grand 
tour" on which he has indulged violently in "every species 
of dissipation." He is mortally bored by Virginia and 
everything in it, and shows his contempt upon every occa- 
sion. He dashes books around, kicks dogs, and deports him- 
self generally as might be expected of the lowest type of 
eighteenth century buck. It is obvious, though, that he is 
going to tame down and marry Clare Lee, his childhood 
sweetheart. He is a little slow, however, in arranging mat- 
ters, partly because of his father 's loud insistence upon the 
marriage and partly because of the obvious willingness of 
the colorless Clare. Progress in the affair is at last being 
made ; but soon a theatrical troupe comes to Williamsburg. 
During a performance of a play, Effingham leaves the side 
of the mortified Clare, mounts the stage and accosts Beatrice 
Hallam, the beautiful star of the company. Rebuffed, he 
is the laughing-stock of the audience. Borne on by a care- 
fully self-encouraged whirlwind of rage and passion, he 
determines to overcome the young girl, and easily becomes 
intimate with Hallam, her supposed father, who compels her 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 43 

to receive him. After torturing her with his importunings, 
even insultingly offering to marry her, he finds that force 
is the only resort, and carries her off at night across his 
saddle to the James River, where two hireling thugs have 
placed a boat at his disposal. Previously, however, Beatrice 
has been for a sail on the James, has had her boat capsized, 
and has been rescused by young Charles Waters. The lat- 
ter — whom she has found to be her cousin, the son of the 
brother of her real father — learns of the abduction, and 
with one helper pursues Effingham. When the boats meet, 
the rescuers put one of their adversaries out of commission, 
but Effingham attempts to murder Waters, who is sustain- 
ing the fainting girl. The reeling of the vessel, however, 
causes him to miss his mark and strike down his surviving 
man. He then plunges his sword into the breast of Waters, 
shoots Beatrice, jumps into the river and swims for the 
shore. He hastens out of the country, for he doubtless 
realizes that for so dastardly an action even Mr. Effingham 
can not go unpunished. After long suffering Waters re- 
covers and marries Beatrice, who has not been quite so 
badly hurt as he, but whose night's experience, added to a 
previous cough, is enough to forebode her subsequent death 
from consumption. 

The second book brings Effiingham back to Virginia. He 
has again been wallowing in the sties of European cities, 
and comes home a grumbling, vitality-sapped household 
tyrant. His friends (he actually has them) are still deter- 
mined to inflict him upon poor, stupid Clare Lee, and this 
time their generalship is successful. They cause him to 
suspect that she is being courted by another, and at the 
proper time the little ever-willing ewe-lamb is fed to the 
Minotaur. So much for Clare and Champ Effingham, and 
Beatrice and Charles Waters, who are the central charac- 
ters of the first volume. 



44 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

The Virginia Comedians would, however, scarcely be a 
mid-nineteenth-century novel if it stopped at so small an 
amount of love complication. Miss Alethea and the jolly 
fox-hunting Jack Hamilton, Lanky Lugg and Donsy Smith, 
Captain Ralph Waters and Henrietta Lee all tread the path 
of matrimony. When the two parts of The Virginia Come- 
dians were issued by the G. W. Dillingham Company as 
separate novels they were called Beatrice Hallam and Cap- 
tain Ralph, respectively. In fact, with Beatrice ill in 
the mountains and with the Champ-Clare affair so luke- 
warm, the courtship of Captain Ralph and Henrietta is 
the real life of the second book. Lanky is Ralph's servant, 
and the wedding of the musical, good-natured, honest but 
not very capable youth to the sweet daughter of the Will- 
iamsburg factor is largely owing to the good offices of the 
indefatigable captain. 

Nearly all of Cooke's novels belong to the type in which 
heredity and surroundings, if used at all, are mere conven- 
tions to be juggled with at the caprice of the author. There 
is in The Virginia Comedians a contrast between the serious, 
contemplative, revolution-fomenting Charles Waters and 
his brother, the boisterous soldier-adventurer, Ralph. The 
lily-pale Clare is a sister of Henrietta, who is as robust, 
aggressive, and sprightly as need be. Ralph is quite below 
Henrietta in social rank, but he stands on his merit, and is 
welcomed by both father and daughter, though not quite so 
promptly by the latter. The courtship of these lively, sen- 
sible people gives a sane tone to the second book which, 
however, is not so dramatic as the first. Apart from the 
main plot The Virginia Comedians offers some interesting 
digressions in the way of comic scenes and sketches from 
colonial life. Tag as parson and schoolmaster is well con- 
ceived. Notable also are the accounts of the governor's ball, 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 45 

the Williamsburg fair, and the development of liberal senti- 
ment in polities. 

If a prospective reader decides from the first few pages 
whether or not he will go on with a book, John Esten Cooke 
is under a disadvantage. The Virginia Comedians is sup- 
posed to be arranged from or based on a manuscript work 
written by a Mr. C. Effingham, who refers to Champ as 
his "respected ancestor," but is otherwise not identified. 
Cooke as editor begins with a few pages supposedly by the 
"author of the ms.," and then explains that he will sim- 
plify, "give more artistic point to certain passages," and 
omit some "unnecessary and superfluous portions." This 
complex beginning, which may have been suggested to 
Cooke by Carlyle's Sartor Resartus, is likely to perplex 
the casual reader and is unfortunately characteristic of 
many of the author's books. But Cooke here plays up to 
the part admirably. Few writers who shift from one sup- 
posed character to another are more skilful in escaping 
a stylistic identity. The pretended "author" begins one 
passage : " ' Have you never, friend, who now readest these 
unworthy lines, abandoned for a time your city life, with 
its noise and bustle, and eternal striving, and locking up 
with your ledgers, or your lawbooks, all thoughts of busi- 
ness, gone into that bright lowland which the James flows 
proudly through, a band of silver wavering across a field 
of emerald? . . .' " At the close of this passage the sup- 
posed "editor" says: "Thus far, the author of the ms. in 
that rhetorical and enthusiastic style which everywhere 
characterizes his works. Let us descend from the heights 
of apostrophe and declamation to the prose of simple narra- 
tive. " And he does so. 

Aside from being Cooke 's best work, The Virginia Come- 
dians is his longest — and the later Henry St. John makes 
virtually the third volume of a trilogy. In these novels 



46 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

Cooke preserves a superb detachment ; lie rarely if at all in- 
trudes his personality. It is hard even to think of Champ 
Effingham without bitterness, but Cooke had studied his 
field and, without apology or praise, presented his charac- 
ters as he conceived them to have existed. In this respect 
his work is on a plane with Tom Jones and Vanity Fair, 
and such an achievement is an artistic triumph for a writer 
who found The Wide, Wide World "one of the most de- 
lightful of books," and was soon to write a novel of this 
once popular type. 

From its very appearance in the year of its completion 
The Virginia Comedians was favorably received, flattering 
reviews appearing in the Charleston, Richmond, and New 
York papers, and in Harper's Magazine. In "Virginia," 
a Phi Beta Kappa poem, delivered at William and Mary 
College on July 3, 1856, Thompson paid a graceful tribute 
to its vivid recreation of the colonial past. The fame of 
the novel was such that it was dramatized by C. W. Tay- 
leure and presented at the Richmond Theatre, Richmond, 
on April 29, 1857. Joseph Jefferson, almost on the thresh- 
old of his great fame, was stage manager and played the 
part of Lanky Lugg, the role best suited to his talents. ' ' In 
consequence of the extreme length of this great play no 
other piece can be presented. ' ' So reads the program from 
which it is learned that Patrick Henry — who in the book 
is unrevealed by name until the end — was made into the 
star part and was played by Mr. W. H. Briggs. The play 
was shortly thereafter presented at the Holliday Street 
Theatre, Baltimore, the book title having been discarded in 
favor of "Freedom's Dawn, or the Man in the Red Cloak." 
In a Baltimore announcement Tayleure referred to the 
play's "marked favor of reception" in Richmond; but it 
seems never to have been revived. It was Cooke's only work 
to appear on the professional stage. His novels have far 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 47 

too many characters, too much sweep and pageantry, for 
successful condensation in a three-hour talking piece. If 
the cinema had existed in his time he might have won fame 
and fortune as a scenario writer. His crises are normally 
brought about by accidents, runaways, or rescues from 
drowning, rather than by the subtleties of conversation or 
the development of a mental attitude. In their shift back 
and forth from public events to the fortunes of a set of 
lovers, Cooke's best books before and after the war are of 
the same mold as the motion picture, The Birth of a Nation. 
During his hard work on The Virginia Comedians Cooke 
had thought frequently of joining the church. He was by 
nature of a religious turn of mind; and, on the death of 
his mother and several times thereafter, had received letters 
from relatives urging him to take the step. Cooke's father 
was not a member of the church; his mother had been an 
Episcopalian, and to her church he turned. The event is 
beautifully commemorated in his diary: "Last Sunday — 
March 5 — I joined St. James's Church. It is the greatest 
event of my life and I devoutly thank God for having 
changed my heart and made me see the sublime light of 
heaven. Henceforth, I feel, the world has no trial too hard 
for endurance — death no sting. ... A feeling of perfect 
peace follows and accompanies me — life spreading before 
me like a boundless horizon of sunshine. . . . Singular! 
I was just finishing the Va. Comedians and on Saturday 
morning rose with my head full of the revision. Then 
commenced the struggle whether I should go on with it or 
write at once to Mr. Cummins to ask an interview. The 
hand of God is just as plain to me in the whole matter as 
that sunshine yonder. I wrote: that I wished to see him — 
thought of joining the church, doubted my fitness. He 
would be most pleased to see me. I went: had an hour's 
talk — he had never seen a state of feeling which delighted 



48 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

him more . . . tomorrow was communion ! There it was : 
had I delayed to this week I should not now have been 
a member of the church. . . . All my friends are surprised 
and delighted — Buck I think much impressed. Would to 
God Pa, and he and all would be made to think by it. My 
life has only begun — the world opened. My heart and in- 
tellect take a new glory, and I shall be a celebrated man. 
. . . One thing comes to my mind often. . . . My blessed, 
sainted mother who placed her hand on my head as she was 
dying and blessed me — whose last prayer I doubt not was 
for her children — Mother, I have taken one step toward 
you." Letters, journals, and his books testify to the never- 
waning quality of Cooke's Christian faith. The step here 
recorded colored the rest of his life. 

Thomas Jefferson had written the statute of Virginia for 
religious freedom which struck a staggering blow at the 
Episcopal church ; but this fact did not prevent Cooke from 
finding in the early life of the great statesman the inspira- 
tion for his next literary venture. Almost immediately 
upon finishing The Virginia Comedians Cooke began, using 
the same locality and the same period of time, to fashion a 
slender romance around certain letters and other accounts 
of Thomas Jefferson's sojourn at William and Mary Col- 
lege. He said of The Youth of Jefferson that it was ' ' writ- 
ten as a relaxation" from "the exhausting toil" which at- 
tended the composition of the preceding work; and it is 
neither very wide in scope nor very ambitious. The Vir- 
ginia Comedians and Henry St. John together constitute 
an epic of late Colonial Virginia. With reference to these 
works the brief Youth of Jefferson is, as it were, an ex- 
panded interlude, a relation borne later by Hilt to Hilt to 
Surry of Eagle' s-N est and its sequel, Mohun. As in the 
case of so many of Cooke's books, the title was hard to 
choose. Crooks and Shepherds yielded place to Arcadians, 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 49 

under which name the manuscript was sent to Redfield on 
May 19. It appeared, however, as The Youth of Jefferson; 
or a Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Vir- 
ginia, A.D., 1764. On a visit to New York, Cooke engaged 
a bookseller in conversation with regard to the book which 
was displayed for sale. The incognito author was much 
amused at the almost angry insistence that the work was 
an authoritative history. Aside from the three books pub- 
lished and the three he wrote, the year 1854 found Cooke 
active in other ways. "I am for the first time very busy 
regularly," he wrote. "For a week or so I have been at- 
tending to Middleton's Case, and editing the Messenger and 
ditto the Express, and writing the Arcadians. Very tire- 
some, but it will advantage me." 

The Youth of Jefferson affords pleasant reading for 
those Who like a quaintly imagined reconstruction of the 
past and are not averse to having historical personages doc- 
tored to suit a novelist's purposes. The future author of 
the Declaration of Independence was in love with Rebecca 
Burwell. Miss Burwell, however, married Jacqueline Am- 
bler, and Jefferson later married Martha Wayles, the widow 
of Bathurst Skelton. So much for the actual historical basis 
of the romance. In Cooke's handling of the Jefferson- 
Ambler-Bur well triangle, the embryo sage of Monticello 
appears as Sir Asinus, his rival as Jacques, and the lady 
as Belle-bouche or Belinda, a name which Jefferson ac- 
tually employed in referring to Miss Burwell. Cooke makes 
use of non-historical characters as well as historical. He 
describes the governor's surroundings at "Williamsburg, the 
life of the college, and the plantation life of the neighbor- 
hood. Of course these accounts are not definitely authentic, 
although an atmosphere of essential truth pervades the 
work. "If its grotesque incidents beguile an otherwise 
weary hour with innocent laughter, the writer's ambition 



50 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

will have been fully gratified, ' ' says the author in his six- 
line preface. Cooke's humor is never of the broad, racy 
kind which is often regarded as typical of the United 
States; it is delicate, playful, fanciful, at most provocative 
of a smile. A short quotation will illustrate the tone of 
the composition: 

" 'Please hand me the music,' said Belle-bouche ; 'there in the 
scarlet binding.' 

"Jacques started and obeyed. As she received it the young girl'3 
hand touched his own and he uttered a sigh which might have melted 
rocks. The reason was, that Jacques was in love; we state the fact, 
though it has probably appeared before. 

"Belle-bouche's voice was like liquid moonlight and melodious 
flowers. Its melting involutions and expiring cadences unwound 
themselves and floated from her lips like satin ribbon gradually 
drawn out." 

Cooke followed fast upon the heels of The Youth of 
Jefferson with The Last of the Foresters: or, Humors on 
the Border; a story of the Old Virginia Frontier, the third 
novel to be written in 1854. He "commenced in June or 
July, stopped at the 5 or 600th page about Aug. 15" to go 
to the Valley for a six weeks' vacation, returned about the 
first of October, and finished the work on the seventeenth. 
The manuscript was at first called The History of Verty: 
his performances and pedigree. The Harpers wisely re- 
fused it; but Derby and Jackson accepted it, and adver- 
tised it as Redbud's Necklace. Either of these titles would 
have given a suggestion of the nature of the book ; but the 
author and the publisher must have felt that the contents 
would not bear divulging, for it appeared as The Last of the 
Foresters, a title scarcely applicable, since of the numerous 
characters the only ones who could possibly be called fores- 
ters are an old Indian woman who figures but slightly, 
and her supposed son, the hero, whose only "forester" 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 51 

attributes are an excessive imperviousness to knowledge 
and an ability to shoot well. The unfitness of the eleventh 
hour title is also patent in the light of historical fact. The 
scene is laid in Colonial times, and foresters surely were 
not by that time reduced in number to one mild specimen. 

The book is a rather unsatisfactory performance. Al- 
though it is far better than Leather Stocking and Silk in 
plot construction, and gives some passably good pictures 
of Valley life, it is rendered disagreeable by a very maudlin 
love affair. Cooke seems to have thought, for the time at 
least, that in composing the new work he was making great 
progress stylistically; he referred to the chapter entitled 
"The Rose of Glengary" as his "crack writing." The 
style of the book is characteristic of the author's more 
subjective vein and is commendable; but its gracefulness 
and limpidity are not able to counteract the effect of an un- 
ending redundancy. Verty, to whom the epithet "dreamy" 
is applied literally scores of times, is in love with Squire 
Summers's daughter, Redbud, a heroine of the type of Clare 
Lee. Redbud — who is soft, sweet, tender, and blushing 
throughout— falls into a stream, as do so many of Cooke's 
ladies, and takes a terrible cold. She is immature as well 
as delicate, for she is only about sixteen and a half years 
old when the novel closes. Needless to say the Squire's 
daughter cannot marry the fatherless son of the queer In- 
dian woman ; consequently, by the frequent transfer of a 
necklace and by a birthmark, Verty is discovered to be the 
son of a lawyer who has often been sobbing before a por- 
trait of his little child Anna, supposedly a girl. How? 
Why, Arthur Anne Rushton is Verty 's true designation, 
and, as a baby, he was called by a variant of his middle 
name! 

Throughout The Last of the Foresters Cooke revels in 
the fine autumn scenery of the Valley, "the loveliness of 



52 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

the fair fields," "the morning splendors and magnificent 
sunsets." "It is in the middle of these scenes that he has 
endeavored to place a young hunter — a child of the woods — 
and to show how his wild nature was impressed by the new 
life and advancing civilization around him. The process 
of his mental development is the chief aim of the book." 
Verty's progress is disappointing. He changes his clothes 
and secures the undesired affection of a spinster boarding- 
school mistress, but the Cooperesque "anan," by which he 
requests a monosyllabic version of an uncomprehended sen- 
tence, is still used on page 393 of a book of 419 pages. 
Nothing complimentary can be said of the central romance, 
but the Ashley-Fanny, Jinks-Sallianna, Round jacket-La- 
vinia approaches and understandings are by no means dis- 
agreeable. They save the novel from being a welter of 
insipid sentimentalism. Modern writers have brought in 
with the strong man a strong woman, who harks back phys- 
ically to the vigorous Griselda, but Cooke always shared 
the medieval-born admiration of the frail woman. Could 
the girl who caught cold at a mere foot-wetting really have 
been so attractive? "Why should not Mrs. O'Calligan, 
"young and handsome, strong and healthy," have been 
given at least a chance of being a subsidiary heroine ? As 
the third book written in a very busy year, The Last of the 
Foresters was probably an indiscretion of a tired author 
who was never at all capable of self-criticism, and whose 
friends were in this respect worse than useless since they 
would praise anything he showed them. As a motto for 
the novel, Cooke chose some lines from A Midsummer 
Night's Dream. "This weak and idle theme . . . gentles, 
do not reprehend," he asks. Surely the kindest criticism 
applicable to The Last of the Foresters would be that made 
by the Hartford Christian Secretary of Simms's pseudony- 
mous Vasconselos, a criticism which Redfield artlessly 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 53 

printed in an advertisement of the book: "to such as are 
fond of this order of literature, it will be found intensely 
interesting. ' ' 

As has been shown in the case of The Knight of Espalion, 
Evan of Foix, and Fairfax, the order of publication of 
Cooke's works often differed from that of their composi- 
tion. In the Spring of 1855 he wrote a book called Ellie, 
which was promptly accepted by the Richmond publisher, 
A. Morris. Cooke then went on a visit to Amelia County 
and upon his return to Richmond was told by Morris that 
Derby and Jackson were about to bring out ahead of The 
Last of the Foresters a work which had been accepted later. 
The author became angry and wrote at once demanding the 
return of his manuscript. Derby sent it back. ' ' His note, ' ' 
says Cooke, "was that of a gentleman and I was horrified 
at what I had so hastily done. " To a note of apology Derby 
replied that, while he might yet bring out the book when 
times improved, he was perfectly willing for the author to 
be on the lookout for another publisher. The Last of the 
Foresters appeared in a very attractive form in 1856 under 
the Derby and Jackson imprint, but the author's ill-advised 
impulsiveness gave the later- written Ellie a priority in pub- 
lication. 

On the title-page of Ellie: or, the Human Comedy, John 
Esten Cooke is described as "author of 'The Virginia Come- 
dians,' 'Leather Stocking and Silk,' 'The Youth of Jeffer- 
son,' 'Peony,' etc." "Peony," here included with his three 
books, was the first Messenger article for which the author 
was paid; it was a purpose story which appeared in the 
May number of 1852. Its full title was "Peony: a Tale for 
the Times. Addressed to the Friends and Opponents of 
Free Schools. ' ' The name of the story is taken from Peony, 
a child who comes "down from the Blue Ridge merrily 
singing, ' ' but is ragged, dirty, and ignorant, and lives amid 



54 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

squalid surroundings with a drunken father. Presently 
everything is shown in a new light : ' ' And Peony had 
caused this change throughout! Undoubtedly she had! 
She had lent an attentive ear to the Master's directions 
(that worthy master who saw all), and gradually the place 
became changed. The house was neat : the ground annexed 
to it was better tilled: the father had given up his bottle 
gradually, and at last wholly: a newspaper, borrowed by 
Peony, might often be seen upon the rude but neat pine 
table, or in Peony's hands at evening, when all — grouped 
around her — listened. The whole was changed, and Peony 
had done all — a little child but strong in faith and hope. 
. . . Peony changed all— but the FREE SCHOOL changed, 
in all things, Peony. They were two different persons, were 
they not — the Peony who shook with mirth at a little ani- 
mal's suffering, and begged in beggar garb upon the high- 
way, and that Peony who, snatched from IGNORANCE 
and vice, taught her old father there in the glad morning 
light?" 

" Peony" is a piece of social propaganda which probably 
was the germ of Ellie. Cooke was profoundly grieved by 
his father's death which occurred on December 15, 1854; 
and his sorrow, together with his religious awakening earlier 
in the year, doubtless prompted a weighing of values, a 
search for the why of poverty, and a sounding of the shal- 
lowness of the so-called genteel life about him. Ellie is in 
essence a transcript of Richmond 1 life in the mid-fifties; 
but Cooke expressly states that, in drawing his characters, 
he had no real persons in mind. For the first time he chose 
many of his personages from a sordid milieu. ' ' Why should 

i Cooke does not localize his story, but references to the river south 
of the city, etc., indicate that he had Richmond in mind as the scene 
of his events. The society which he knew was, of course, Richmond 
society. 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 55 

our attention be confined to the beautiful flowers, and the 
noble and straight trees, to the exclusion of the weeds and 
stunted undergrowth? All is human, and why not look 
at them, and weigh them?" Nevertheless, Cooke felt a 
certain hesitation in depicting low types, and saw fit to ex- 
plain in his "Introductory" that each of his evil characters 
was neutralized by a good one. 

The 576 pages of Elite were reeled off between March 5 
and April 6. "Ellie will create a great talk," thought 
the author, but he was doomed to disappointment. The Last 
of the Foresters retained suggestions of The Virginia Come- 
dians. The new book was, on the contrary, completely of 
the mid-nineteenth century type which depicts the patiently 
endured sorrow of penniless Christian childhood. Ellie is 
hardly notable in any respect except for the rapidity of 
its composition, but it is in one key, and avoids the repeti- 
tions and the love-drivel of The Last of the Foresters. The 
titular heroine is a little city waif. She and a small brother 
are brought to extreme poverty by the protracted illness 
and death of the adults of the family. She receives kind- 
nesses at the hands of a German grocer and a lovable old 
colored woman, and is befriended by Sansoucy, the genial 
forward-looking editor of the "Weekly Mammoth." With 
Ellie and her friend, Lucia, and the latter 's boy helper and 
sweetheart, Wide-awake, as foils, Cooke reviews and satir- 
izes the frivolous elements of society. Miss Incledon is a 
selfish, unprincipled, ' ' fast" young woman of fashion. Fan- 
tish is a low-minded, mischief-making dandy who practices 
on her gullibility and boasts of his familiarity with her. 
Even more scurrilous than he, is his friend Captain Tarnish. 
There is a fop, Heartsease, and a Miss Gossyp for him to 
marry ; just as a gracious Miss Aurelia is provided for San- 
soucy. The latter and the gruff, good Dr. Fossyl — who 
suggests Rushton, the rough but kindly lawyer in The Last 



56 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

of the Foresters — are both fond of moralizing, and the book 
is replete with disquisitions on such mid-century topics aa 
the wrong of duelling, the immorality of the newly popu- 
larized waltz, and the doubtful utility of "tracts alone when 
those for whom they are intended suffer from want of 
bread." Ellie, in her role of heroine, must of course re- 
ceive a special dispensation, and at the end she is awarded 
the position of long-lost little sister of good Mr. Sansoucy. 
In his attack on certain social ills as well as in his depic- 
tion of Ellie, Cooke was influenced in a general way by 
Dickens. The novel may, in a last analysis, be best de- 
scribed, however, as a very lengthy tract — and an excellent 
one. 

Cooke's books had up to this time been without pictures, 
but David Strother consented to illustrate Ellie. He said 
that, while he followed his instructions closely, he could 
have done better if he had had time to read the manuscript. 
He warned the author that it would take about six weeks to 
have the engraving well done. "I might have divided the 
work and had it done sooner, but Edmonds is the only tol- 
erably reliable cutter of faces and expression that I know, 
and he is not above mediocrity. Our American engravers 
are no artists as the French are, but simply mechanics and 
very dull ones at that. I have prepared the title page for 
printing in tints as you ordered." Cooke kept no account of 
the financial return from his first few books, but he recorded 
that Morris paid for the illustrations of Ellie and agreed 
to give him ten per cent on all sales. 

During the summer of 1855, Cooke apparently developed 
a rather serious liking for a young lady of Amelia County. 
In his journal he had often set down genial flippant ac- 
counts of his "flirting," his "playing second fiddle de- 
cidedly," or his finding "one very sweet" girl in every 
group. The accounts were little more than the record of 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 57 

a wholesome and chivalric interest in the young ladies of his 
acquaintance. After his visit to Amelia in May, however, 
such notes as he made assumed a decidedly different tone. 
He now wrote often of a prospective "change" in his life 
and of a coming "event." Several pages of his journal, in 
the place where the entries would naturally have been 
most pertinent, have been torn out, while on the narrow 
stub in Cooke's handwriting is the comment: "nothing 
on this." The numerous manuscript poems of this period 
are very amorous. "Forgotten who and when it was," says 
a note inscribed beside one of the stanzas in 1867, the year 
of the author's eventual marriage. The ill-omened love- 
affair occupied Cooke's mind for at least three years. In 
March, 1857, he contemplated marriage the following sum- 
mer. The matter was the subject of serious correspondence 
with his brothers, but the name of the lady is nowhere men- 
tioned. "I find my affection decreasing for her, I fear," 
he wrote to "Sainty" in June, 1858. "Well, if she casts 
it away, my conscience will be clear." 

The mental preoccupation attendant upon this cautiously 
recorded or carefully censored love-affair may have caused 
Cooke to hesitate to begin a work requiring the steady ap- 
plication which he gave to his novels. However this may 
be, his next book, Henry St. John, was not begun until 
January, 1856, and was not in the hands of the publishers 
until early in 1857. Meanwhile he was devoting himself 
assiduously to the production of magazine articles, and was 
becoming a figure of national importance. Besides several 
pieces in the Messenger, and such ephemeral work as he 
was doing for newspapers, Cooke in the year 1856 had five 
considerable prose articles in Putnam's Monthly and four 
in Harper's. The titles are interesting: "In Memoriam," 
"How I Courted Lulu. In Seven Tableaux," "Annie at 
the Corner: The History of a Heart," "News from Grass- 



58 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

land. A Mountain Letter from John St. John, Esq., to his 
friend in Town," "John Randolph: A Personal Sketch," 
"The Tragedy of Hairston," "Baby Bertie's Christmas," 
"How I was Discarded: By a Married Man," "Fanny and 
Myself: Being the Recollections of an Elderly Gentleman." 
A typical early nineteenth century fondness for anonymity 
and pseudonymity is here displayed; of nine articles six 
are unsigned, while the other three purport to emanate 
from three distinct sources. The varied titles show Cooke's 
wide range of interest, but on close reading almost all the 
articles prove to be either forerunners or else by-products 
of his novels or histories. "Baby Bertie's Christmas" is, 
for instance, very closely akin to "Peony" and Ellie; and 
John Randolph is the subject of a chapter in Stories of the 
Old Dominion. 

The novel which Cooke wrote in 1856 was, while in manu- 
script, successively referred to as a "sequel" to The Vir- 
ginia Comedians, Old Virginia, and Bonnybel Vane. The 
latter name was adopted for a post-bellum reprint, but 
the Harpers issued the book in 1859 under the designedly 
old-fashioned title, Henry St. John, Gentleman, of "Flower 
of Hundreds," in the County of Prince George, Virginia. 
A Tale of 177 4- '7 5. In historic time this sequel follows 
The Virginia Comedians at about a decade. Except for a 
few vacancies caused by deaths, the characters of the for- 
mer work are found in the new story. Champ and Will 
Effingham, Captain Ralph, Lanky Lugg, and their wives, 
Mr. Crow, Mr. A. Z. Smith, Parson Tag, and others are 
glimpsed in passing. One or two personages from The 
Youth of Jefferson also make a brief bow. The major plot 
deals with the love, estrangement, reconciliation and mar- 
riage of Bonnybel Vane, the seventeen-year-old daughter 
of Colonel Vane of Vanely, and Henry St. John, the young 
master of that famous old estate which was later to be the 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 59 

scene of Mrs. Burton Harrison's Flower de Hundred. St. 
John is a lieutenant in Governor Dunmore's guards, but 
resigns a position which becomes intolerable. He is suc- 
ceeded by Lindon who has squandered the greater part of 
a large estate and desires to stave off creditors by securing 
the prospective inheritance of Colonel Vane. To break up 
the correspondence of the lovers, Lindon employs a Miss 
Carne, a seamstress who is a clever insinuator and a skilful 
forger. Miss Carne is successful in her mission, but the 
assiduous Lindon is decidedly unwelcome when he appears 
as a substitute lover, resuming a repulsed courtship of 
some time agone. Following the tactics of Effingham, he 
kidnaps Bonny and is in the preliminaries of a forced 
marriage when a rescue is effected by St. John, who has 
been informed by the unpaid and maltreated Miss Carne. 
The primary romance is accompanied by the usual quota 
of subsidiary affairs ; but the love interest is less dominant 
than in the earlier books of the trilogy. "For the volume 
has two themes, two aims : the story of a man and a woman ; 
the history, also, of a period in the annals of a nation." 
Charles Waters, since the death of Beatrice, has been work- 
ing zealously for a republic. Pages are devoted to his 
political pronouncements. He is no longer merely a bright 
young liberal alertly interested in governmental topics. He 
is represented as being the brain, as Henry was the tongue, 
Jefferson the pen, and Washington the sword of the Revo- 
lution. This perversion of historical fact is one of the chief 
faults of a book which is in most respects a worthy sequel 
to The Virginia Comedians. The portrayal of Dunmore 
and his entourage is brilliantly done ; there is true splendor 
in the depiction of the last stand of the arrogant alien 
Governor of Virginia. Cooke on the whole builds rather 
largely on facts, always of course handling them freely, but 
sometimes in too much detail, as when he chronicles the 



60 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

reaction of a dozen counties to the governor's famous re- 
moval of the powder. History writing has been placed upon 
an entirely different plane since the youth of Cooke, who 
in some respects anticipated the modern historian. Like 
J. R. Green and later writers he thoroughly realized the 
one-sidedness of the traditional war-recording chronicle 
which gave rise to the proverb about the blessedness of the 
nation without a history. In the quasi-author 's prologue 
he stated his purpose : 

"Where are the men and manners of the Revolution, only hinted 
at obscurely in what the world calls histories? Do they exist for 
us today except as names and traditions? And what does the present 
generation know of them? 

"Alas for the historians! They tell us many things, but so little! 
They relate, with much dignity, how the battle was fought and the 
treaty made — they tell us the number of the combatants, and spread 
every protocol upon the page. But the student of the past asks for 
more. Of the historian we ask a picture of the older day — portraits 
of the Virginian and his household. We would know the peculiari- 
ties of character and manner which marked a great race — the wor- 
thies of Virginia. We would live again, for a time, beneath those fair 
or storm-convulsed skies of 'Old Virginia'; we would take the hand 
of the honest old planter; we would go into his library and look 
over his shoulder as he reads the new Act in the Virginia Gazette, 
and would not disdain to scan critically the powdered curls and 
looped-back gowns, the flounces, and furbelows, and fancies of the 
dames. 

"We would see the rude Old-Field School on the edge of the forest, 
and listen to the words, and watch the bright faces of these children 
who will make hardy patriots and devoted women." 

In this late Colonial trilogy — the two parts of The Vir- 
ginia Comedians, and Henry St. John — Cooke achieved the 
finest product of his career. He attained his difficult goal. 
He accomplished the imaginative reconstruction of the life 
of a past period with sufficient charm and power almost to 
warrant his being called a great social historian. No one 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 61 

has compressed better than he into three small paragraphs 
a summary of the third quarter of the eighteenth century 
in Virginia, a period fascinatingly depicted in this idyllic 
epic in prose. The quotation is from the Appleton (1883) 
edition of The Virginia Comedians: 

"It was the period of the culmination of the old social rSgime. 
A splendid society had burst into flower, and was enjoying itself 
in the sunshine and under the blue skies of the most beautiful of 
lands. The chill winds of the Revolution were about to blow, but 
no one suspected it. Life was easy, and full of laughter — of cordial 
greetings, grand assemblies, and the zest of existence which springs 
from the absence of care. Social intercourse was the joy of the 
epoch, and crowds flocked to the race-course, where the good horses 
were running for the cup, or to the cock-fight, where the favorite 
spangles fought to the death. The violins seemed to be ever playing 
— at the Raleigh Tavern, in Williamsburg where young Jefferson 
'danced with Belinda in the Apollo,' and was happy; or in the 
great manor houses of the planters clustering along the lowland 
rivers. In town and country life was a pageant. His Excellency 
the royal Governor went in his coach-and-six to open the Burgesses. 
The youths in embroidered waistcoats made love to the little beauties 
in curls and roses. The 'Apollo' rang with music, the theatre on 
Gloucester Street with thunders of applause; and the houses of 
the planters were as full of rejoicing. At Christmas — at every 
season, indeed — the hospitable old 'nabob' entertained throngs of 
guests; and, if we choose to go back in fancy, we may see those 
Virginians of the old age amid their most characteristic surround- 
ings. The broad board is spread with plenty; the wood fires roar 
in the fireplaces; the canary sparkles; the wax-lights flame, lighting 
up the Louis Quatorze chairs, the old portraits, the curious bric-a- 
brac, and the rich dresses of fair dames and gallant men. Care 
stands out of the sunshine of this brilliant throng, who roll in their 
chariots, dance the minuet, exchange compliments, and snatch the 
charm of the flying hours with no thought, one would say, but 
enjoyment, and to make the best of the little life we live below. 

"This is what may be seen on the surface of society under the 
Old Virginia regime; but that social organization had reached a 
stage when the elements of disintegration had already begun their 
work. A vague unrest pervaded the atmosphere, and gave warning 



62 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

of the approaching cataclysm. Class distinctions had been immemo- 
rially looked upon as a part of the order of nature; but certain 
curious and restive minds began to ask if that is just, and to glance 
sidewise at the wealthy nabob in his fine coach. The English 
Church was the church of the gentry; it was not the church of the 
people. The 'New Light' ministers began to talk about 'sinegogues 
of Satan' and to tell the multitudes, who thronged to hear them 
preach in the fields, that the reverend parsons were no better than 
they should be. New ideas were on the march. The spirit of change 
was under the calm surface. The political agitation soon to burst 
forth was preceded by the social. The hour was near when the 
merry violins were to stop playing; when the 'Apollo room' at the 
Raleigh would become the meeting-place of political conspirators; 
and the Virginians, waking from their dreams of enjoyment, were 
to be confronted by the hard realities of the new time. 

"Such was the period selected by the youthful writer of this 
volume for the picture he wished to attempt of that former society. 
When the story opens, the worthy 'Virginia Comedians' have pros- 
pered. They have gone away, but have returned year after year, and 
are still playing at what is now the 'Old theatre near the Capitol.' 
The winter still attracts the pleasure-loving Virginians to the vice- 
regal city, and throughout the theatrical season, beginning in the 
autumn, the playhouse is thronged with powdered planters, beautiful 
dames, honest yeomen, and indented servants. More than ever the 
spirit of unrest — social, political and religious — pervades all these 
classes. Revolution is already in the air, and the radical sentiments 
of young Waters and the man in the Red Cloak, in this volume, 
meet with thousands of sympathizers. On the surface the era is 
tranquil, but beneath is the volcano. Passion smoulders under the 
laughter; the homespun coat jostles the embroidered costume; men 
are demanding social equality, as they will soon demand a republic; 
and the splendid old regime is about to vanish in the storm of the 
Revolution." 

In the years 1858, 1859, and 1860 Cooke kept no record 
of any kind. This period was perhaps the least happy of his 
life. He not only had the grief of his ill-fated love affair, 
but his spirit had been weighed down by an almost endless 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 63 

chain of deaths. Those of his dearest boyhood friend, his 
eldest brother, his mother, and his father have been recorded. 
He had been especially pained by the death of his father 
who had not been a church member. In 1858, however, in 
writing to "Sainty" a congratulation upon an expressed 
determination to become a Christian, Cooke, having exam- 
ined his father's effects, was able to say: "I found among 
his papers the most irresistible evidence that he had long 
been a true believer in Christ. And our dear mother I 
know has, long since, been reunited to him — she waits for 
us. I do not believe that God will let one of us fail. ' ' The 
grief assuaged by the thought here expressed must soon 
have descended again upon Cooke with renewed fury, for 
in little more than a year "Sainty" himself — beloved as 
the youngest brother and believed to be the most talented 
member of the family — was dead, and Henry soon followed 
him to the grave. 

The best picture of the young novelist in 1858-59 is given 
by an admiring friend, George Cary Eggleston, in his 
Recollections of a Varied Life. After discussing ''George 
Prince Regent" James and John Reuben Thompson, Eggle- 
ston refers to Cooke as "chief among the literary men of 
Richmond" and continues: 

"The matter of getting a living was a difficult one to him then, 
for the reason that with a pride of race which some might think 
quixotic, he had burdened his young life with heavy obligations not 
his own. His father had died leaving debts that his estate could 
not pay. As the younger man got nothing by inheritance, except 
the traditions of honor that belonged to his race, he was under no 
kind of obligation with respect to those debts. But with a chivalric 
loyalty such as few men have ever shown, John Esten Cooke made 
his dead father's debts his own and little by little discharged them 
with the earnings of a toilsome literary activity. 

"His pride was so sensitive that he would accept no help in this, 
though friends earnestly pressed loans upon him when he had a 
payment to meet and his purse was well-nigh empty. At such times 



64 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

he sometimes made his dinner on crackers and tea for many days 
together, although he knew he would be a more than welcome guest 
at the lavish tables of his many friends in Richmond. It was a 
point of honor with him never to accept a dinner or other invitation 
when he was financially unable to dine abundantly at his own 
expense." 

During this period of grief, hard work, and high idealism 
Cooke was, as he recalled years later, doing "editorial mat- 
ter" which "amounted to very considerable" in the "Mes- 
senger, Express, Index, Whig, etc., etc." He wrote a 
number of articles for Appleton's Cyclopaedia, and con- 
tinued his contributions to magazines. For the latter he 
seems at this time to have been paid a normal maximum of 
seventy-five dollars per article. Such work afforded money 
certainly more promptly, and probably in larger amounts 
than could be secured from the royalties of a slow-selling 
book. Whether Cooke desired the cash in hand which a serial 
was supposed to fetch, or whether, more probably, he sought 
a publisher in vain, the longer stories written in the years 
1857-1860 all appeared as serials. Estcourt "was written 
in 1857 at the request of Paul Hayne and appeared in 
Russell's Magazine." "I have always liked it," Cooke 
wrote later, "Was paid $50, leaving $250 due — which Paul 
offered me his poor little copyright on Avolio for — and I 
' indignantly refused. ' " x Of the composition of Falkland 
and The Shadow on the Wall, Cooke in his post-bellum 
literary reminiscences says nothing except that they ap- 
peared in small-town newspapers, and served, both of 
them, as a basis for a later novel, Dr. Vandyke. These 
stories were probably written some time in 1858 or 1859, 
for another work, The Pride of Falling Water, occupied 

i In a letter to Cooke, Hayne expressed bitter regret at this in- 
ability to pay. 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 65 

Cooke in the spring of 1860. Crushed by grief, he felt 
' ' exceedingly weak and sick, ' ' and only his ' ' word pledged 
to the Field and Fireside editor" drove him "to the pen." 
For this serial he received three hundred dollars, and a sim- 
ilar sum was brought by a "remoulded" version which he 
published in the St. Louis Home Journal in 1872-73 as 
Paid, the Hunter. 

In the large amount of prose which Cooke produced in 
the closing fifties his work for Appleton's New American 
Cyclopaedia is perhaps most worthy of note. The encyclo- 
pedia was edited jointly by George Ripley and Charles A. 
Dana, both of whom wrote often to Cooke. "I am," said 
Ripley in one of his letters, "perfectly aware of the onerous 
nature of the task; but with the large circulation of the 
N. A. C. and the national character, which we mean to give it 
a tout prix, I am sure you will find some relish in increase 
of fame, and in your close identification with the first at- 
tempt, on so large a scale, to do ample honor to the illus- 
trious sons of your ancestral soil." After a few of Cooke's 
contributions had been received, Ripley wrote as follows: 
"We are highly gratified with the spirit, ability, and artistic 
grace of your biographical sketches, and earnestly hope that 
you will be able to furnish us with many other of the 
eminent statesman [sic] of Virginia. Should also any 
name, outside that category, in American or English Litera- 
ture occur to you as a favorite subject, we shall be happy 
to receive it from your pen." Among Cooke's numerous 
articles were sketches of Madison, Monroe, and Marshall, 
and of four members of the Lee family. The invitation 
to write the paper on Irving was a very particular compli- 
ment to Cooke's tact as well as his ability, for Irving was 
not only still alive but, because of his distinguished public 
service and his priority to the great New England writers, 



66 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

was an exceedingly lofty figure. ' ' Admirable ' ' is the word 
Dana applied to Cooke's "Irving." Cooke contributed a 
long article on Jefferson which Bancroft, who saw it in 
manuscript, described to Ripley as ' ' a masterly production, 
showing very accurate knowledge of the subject, and open 
to but few criticisms." "It is a matter of great impor- 
tance," Dana had said, "to present the facts, and all the 
facts, of his career in a manner which no party, either 
Democrats or Federalists, of old, or Democrats and Repub- 
licans of our day, can impugn." Cooke succeeded in doing 
this, but his paper is open to attack on the ground of faulty 
proportion. There is no account at all of Jefferson's later 
years ; no mention of the founding of the University of Vir- 
ginia, a work which he commemorated in his epitaph as one 
of the three great achievements of his life. 

Throughout his career Cooke wrote poetry, and his poems 
attracted some attention. He was frequently referred to 
as a poet rather than a novelist. His verse was published 
in Harper's, he was included in the contemporary antholo- 
gies, and had been asked by a New York publishing house 
to bring out, with Thompson as his collaborator, The Poets 
and Poetry of the South, a work which was well under way 
when the war interrupted it, but was never completed. These 
facts would seem to indicate that Cooke had considerable 
poetic ability, but such was hardly the case. The mid- 
century was not over-critical; a wholesome theme was 
nearly all that was demanded. Cooke's rapidity of compo- 
sition was responsible for his chief shortcomings. His 
poems not only frequently lack the fine finish of perfection, 
but are sometimes faulty in rime and meter. Such of them 
as escape technical carelessness are mildly acceptable, but 
few exhibit marked vigor or originality. "Clouds," sug- 
gestive of Bryant's "To a Water-fowl" and Whittier's later 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 67 

"The Eternal Goodness," shows Cooke's faults and some of 
the beauties which the faults obscure : 

CLOUDS 

I know not whither past the crimson zone 

Of evening sail those ships of snow and gold — 
The beauteous clouds that seem to hover and fold 

Their wings — like birds that having all day flown 

Against the blue sky, now at set of sun 
Play for a moment gayly on their soft 
And burnished pinions wide: then from aloft 

Sink down below the horizon and are gone! 

I know not where they fold their shining wings 
In very truth; nor what far happy land 
They come together in — a radiant band, 
The brightest, purest, of all earthly things! 

But well I know that land lies broad and fair 

Beyond the evening: oh! that I were there! 

"Kane," commemorative of the death of the Arctic ex- 
plorer, may owe something to Tennyson's "Ode on the 
Death of the Duke of Wellington." It is an occasional 
poem of dignity, as may be inferred from the first stanza : 

"What plumes are these? 
Sad mourners sweeping like the wings of night 

Over the dark waves of the wide Balize 

Where the great waters sink into the main? 

What wail of pain 
Strikes the bent ear, what sombre sight; 

Looms on the waters, where the ocean breeze 
Ripples the sad, deep seas?" 

In "A Dream of the Cavaliers," a poem, over two hun- 
dred lines long, which appeared in Harper's for January, 
1861, Cooke had a subject well suited to his talents: 

". . . So I pass to the long-gone summers 

Of the unremembered years, 
And share in the joys and sorrows, 

In the April smiles and tears. 



68 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

"With the Cavaliers and the maidens, 

In an idle smiling dream, 
I wander away to the forest, 

Or sail on the rippling stream: 

"I hear as I sit and ponder 

On the trellis'd porch of the hall, 

The tinkle of fairy laughter 
From under the oak-trees tall: 

"And stroll with the bright-eyed damsels, 

As they list to the flattering tale 
Told by the gay young gallants, 

In the moonlight weird and pale: 

"The Comedy plays before me, 

And there on the shining shore, 
With the foolish murmuring lovers, 

I live in the days before!" 

The end of 1860 saw the close of Cooke's first phase as 
a writer. He had been self-supporting and had been of 
financial aid to several members of his family. His reputa- 
tion for trustworthy scholarship was confirmed by his being 
asked to write for Appleton's Cyclopaedia. He was upon 
terms of friendly intimacy with Duyekinck, Stedman, and 
others of the New York literati, and corresponded with still 
others, including Halleck and Willis. Irving, with whom 
he spent a summer day in 1859, wrote asking him to come 
again if he could, as his visit was very refreshing. From 
his home at Fort Lee on the Palisades, Thomas Dunn Eng- 
lish wrote often, and later named a seedling dahlia for his 
literary friend in the South. Children were named for 
Cooke, and he received letters from admirers whose "cup 
of happiness" he would "fill to overflowing" by a reply. 
He was thanked in a printed memorandum for the "suit- 
able sublime and brilliant" ritual he had prepared for his 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 69 

fraternal order, the Red Men. Most important of all, his 
shorter articles were appearing in the leading magazines, 
and his books were being brought out by the best publishing 
houses in America. Few, if any, of his contemporaries had, 
at the age of thirty, greater fame than was enjoyed by John 
Esten Cooke. 

Cooke also received his share of critical attention, much 
of it laudatory, but in this regard he was not unique, as 
George W. Bagby complains in the Richmond Whig for 
August 9, 1858. Bagby says that all Virginia novelists were 
praised equally as displaying "genius of no common 
order," and continues: "No wonder some of them retired 
in disgust. No wonder that some of them, emulous of the 
speed of Dumas rather than the patience of Talfourd and 
the assiduity of Richter, agreed to write a novel in twenty 
minutes by a stop-watch. No wonder that all of them wrote 
carelessly. No wonder that all of them at last benevolently 
wrote no more." The publication of Henry St. John was 
the occasion of another tirade in the Whig about a year 
later. Cooke had been mentioned in the previous article, 
but the latter, although it takes a passing fling at six 
others, was actually entitled "Unkind but Complete De- 
struction of John Esten Cooke, Novelist." 

"I now come," says Bagby, "to the most profuse and 
abandoned novelist of them all, to wit, Effingham Cooke." 
Bagby examines the book and is ' ' constrained to pronounce 
it perhaps the most excusable of all his misdemeanors. . . . 
There is a girl in it who will take all the boys, and a young 
man who will take all the girls. The pretty pictures of 
the Colonial times will please the old folks. And the thing 
will take all around. . . . 

"Well, let it take. The unfortunate writer will need 
all he will make to pay funeral expenses. I am about to 
demolish him. I shall do so by preferring against him two 



70 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

charges, both entirely true, and of so grave a nature that 
no man, and particularly no novelist, can live under the 
weight of them. ' ' The first of these charges is ' ' Mr. Cooke 's 
eyes are in the back of his head. ' ' After scoring the novel- 
ist vigorously, Bagby continues: "I'm proud of my grand- 
daddy, proud of the day and the deeds of his generation; 
but I don't want to get so plague-taked proud of him and 
his times as to undervalue myself and my times. The old 
times may have been mighty good, but there are some first 
rate days and prime doings left. Therefore I desire that 
Effingham Cooke shall sell out his old stock, close business 
in the Behind, and set up in the Now." The second charge 
was: "Mr. Cooke's eyes are not only in the back of his 
head, but they are also afflicted with a pair of rose-colored 
goggles of enormous magnifying powers." Bagby dwells 
again on the glory of the Colonial era as portrayed by 
Cooke and takes up in detail a typical heroine: "Is she 
pretty — I mean Cooke's dead old young female? She is 
that — prodigiously pretty. Is she delightful, merry, jolly, 
full of life and fun, coquettish yet true, skittish yet thor- 
oughbred, and all that? She is — you'd better believe she 
is. . . . And I marvel much that such a set of homely, self- 
ish, money-loving cheats and rascals as we are, should have 
descended from such remarkably fine parents. No doubt 
it is very good noveling, but I swear it is wretched physi- 
ology." 

Bagby 's criticism 1 prompts a general summary of the 
eight volumes which have been commented on and which 
formed the bulk of Cooke's ante-bellum work. All eight are 
novels of Virginia, and they cover three localities and 
phases of the life of the state. No writer had yet dedi- 
cated himself so whole-heartedly to the service of the Old 

i After the Civil War Bagby himself idealized the old South. See 
his Old Virginia Gentleman. 



NOVELIST OF OLD VIRGINIA 71 

Dominion. The four volumes dealing with Colonial life 
in the Tidewater region are on a distinctly higher plane 
than the others ; in them Cooke exhibits a splendid detach- 
ment while he weaves into the border romances and Ellie 
a vast amount of personal idiosyncrasy and reminiscence. 
In discussing Cooke's literary output one should bear in 
mind the general state of the novel in America in the fif- 
ties. Flights in the "grand style," romantic adventure^-V 
pathos, sentiment — these were the ingredients, and Cooke 
abused them no more than most of his contemporaries. If 
the rosebud maidens are said to be superb and are not 
shown to be, one must again blame the custom of the pe- 
riod. The modern novel is much closer to the drama. 
Cooke did not like Dickens, but he outdoes him in repeating 
favorite words and phrases. Wagner's mustache in Fairfax 
is referred to even oftener than the "post-office" mouth in 
Great Expectations. The marriage of first cousins was 
much too frequently a feature of upper class life in Vir- 
ginia, where the estates were so scattered that the only mu- 
tually marriageable young persons were likely to be rela- 
tives. Nearly all Cooke's leading lovers are first cousins, for 
instance, Beatrice and Charles in The Virginia Comedians 
and Bonny and St. John in Henry St. John. The inbreeding 
continues in the second generation, when a second generation 
is portrayed. Thus Max Courtlandt marries his cousin in 
Leather Stocking and Silk, and Max, Junior, also marries 
his cousin. Cooke, who boasted that his ancestors had not 
married first cousins, realized the objections to such mar- 
riages, but never hinted at them in his books. 

Perhaps the best general comment on Cooke's eight 
years as a writer was pronounced by William Gilmore 
Simms in a review of Henry St. John : 

"Mr. Cooke is in possession of admirable material for art, resus- 
citating the ancient life of the Old Dominion in the days of its grand 



72 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

and vigorous development. And we repeat, if true to his own genius, 
no one can surpass him in the happy and noble use of this grand 
moral material. He has done well, so far; but his sinews must be 
a little more seasoned by the proper exercise; his mind more patient, 
more deliberate, more sensible of the burden of the task, more greatly 
stirred within him, by the hourly growing sense of the value of his 
theme; so that he shall shape it with proper care, with a becoming 
purpose, and under a severer, sublimer design." 

There is a special significance in the fact that Henry St. 
John, Cooke's last book before the Civil War, portrayed 
the quiet life of Colonial Virginia with its seething under- 
current which broke to the surface as revolution. In quite 
a parallel fashion, the author himself was playing a part 
in the last scene of another phase of Southern society, a 
scene in which many of the actors were wholly serene and 
few realized the momentous conflagration that was having 
its fuel prepared by the bitterness and obstinacy of the 
two leading national factions. The presidential election of 
1860 served, however, to crystallize public sentiment. It 
made of Cooke an ardent secessionist, and he chafed greatly, 
as he recounts in his renewed diary, at Virginia's delay 
in following South Carolina along what he considered to 
be the path of right and honor. 



CHAPTER III 
THE CIVIL WAR— SOLDIER AND HISTORIAN 

From his unchronicled three-year period of depression 
Cooke's recovery was sudden. His deep personal grief was 
lost sight of in the intensity of his feeling on national events. 
He renewed his diary on February 18, 1861, chiefly to 
record his views on secession, the grave issue then con- 
fronting Virginia: 

"Here I sit in my little room in the 'little wooden house festooned 
with roses,' near the Equestrian Washington yonder — just going to 
Col. Fontaine's to spend the evening with Cousins Kate and Mollie, 
my little pet Marie S. and Miss Ellen Pollard — here, in February 
of the year of Revolutions — the same book before me which has 
recorded ever since 1851 my errant career. 

"Here once more — the same, but changed! 

"What shall I write? Where shall I begin writing? I cannot 
think of putting down these years. They are dead — I survive. 

"Yet, after all my woes, I still retain at thirty, at least cheerful- 
ness and good spirits. But my light-heartedness is gone. 

"The Convention is here; and Wise the 'Old Roman Eagle,' as Dick 
calls him, has just excoriated Stuart and Moore. Success to him. 
Take them one by one, my old Roman, and speak for the liberties 
of Virginia! 

"Overton was defeated — Randolph elected — him with whom I made 
the campaign in the 'Wise War.' We had great times at the City 
Hall and Lower Ward polls that snowy fourth of February; and 
between Lewis Randolph and Bob Wms. I nearly had occasion to 
use my little five shooter. 

"Will war come? If it does, and I fall, this page will remain. 
But I here direct whoever loves me, if they find this volume, to 
destroy it. 'Tis intended for no eye but mine — Remember!" 

Thus Cooke played his wonted part in the life of Rich- 
mond and awaited the unrolling of destined events. His 

73 



74 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

daily routine, as recorded in several detailed entries, was 
much the same as in the middle fifties. The old names of 
friends recur, and there are new ones. Cooke had often 
visited at the executive mansion in the days when Wise was 
governor, and he seems to have been quite an intimate 
friend of the governor's daughter Annie 1 (later Mrs. Hob- 
son), the novelist and the first young lady of the state 
each perhaps enjoying the glamor afforded by associating 
with the other. The governor esteemed Cooke most highly, 
as Annie informed him, and in 1861 the impatient writer 
often sought counsel of his old friend. The following is 
the entry of March 6 : 

"The year of Revolution." 

"We are in the midst of it . . . and yesterday the submissionists 
in the Convention — Dorman of Rockbridge at least — thought the 
time had come when every one should stand fast for — the union. 

"Low and cowardly submission sounds the deepest depths of in- 
famy. But let it pass. We'll fight, and the time is near. 

"Yesterday evening I went to the Ballard House and had a long 
talk with the old governor. . . . 

"I can't compose, I can't think of anything but Virginia's degra- 
dation. 

"But we'll fight our way out yet, and crush the miserable in- 
triguans [sic] who are stifling the brave old commonwealth — for 
brave I do believe she is at her heart. 

"God defend the right!" 

The vehemence with which Cooke embraced the cause of 
secession does not imply that he did so without a careful 
balancing of the issues then prominent. Robert E. Lee's 
reluctance in quitting the United States Army was dwelt 
upon by Cooke in his life of the General, and is well-known. 

i The story "Annie at the Corner" is a tribute to Miss Wise. It 
was printed in Putnam's Monthly in June, 1856, and was repub- 
lished in Pretty Mrs. Gaston, and Other Stories, in 1874. Of Mrs. 
Hobson, Prof. William Peterfield Trent says: "My first teacher, and 
a charming woman, who must have been very pretty in her youth." 



THE CIVIL WAR 75 

Paul Hamilton Hayne's career closely parallels that of 
Cooke— both were born in 1830, both died in 1886, and 
both rendered distinguished service as officers in the Con- 
federate army— yet in May, 1860, Hayne felt so disgusted 
with the Charleston Convention that he unburdened him- 
self to his Virginia friend: "I must say, that I never saw 
(of course there were illustrious exceptions), a dirtier, a 
more blackguard set of fellows; half of the number were 
drunk, and the remainder could hardly be called sober. 
In sad earnest, what, mon ami, is to be the fate of this great 
Republic? Are we not drifting headlong to the Devil?" 
Cooke, like Hayne, kept an open mind until he felt it 
necessary to choose definitely one way or the other. 

John Esten's soldier uncle, Philip St. George Cooke, who 
had spent much of his time on the Western frontier, cast 
his lot with the North and remained an officer in the Union 
army. "Flora," he had written to his nephew in 1856, 
"was married, rather suddenly — to Mr. [J. E. B.] Stuart 
of Va. ... He is a remarkably fine, promising, pure 
young man; and has had so far extraordinary promotion. 
He is a 1st Lieut. 1st Cavalry." This son-in-law and an 
only son, John Rogers Cooke, II, joined the Southern army 
upon the outbreak of hostilities. "Those mad boys," the 
father is reported to have said when called in from the 
West, "if only I had been here." In the Peninsula bat- 
tles the Northern general commanded a cavalry division 
and was opposed by his son-in-law and his nephew — a 
notable pair, for the son-in-law was the greatest of Con- 
federate cavalrymen-, and the nephew was perhaps the 
best known writer engaged on either side. Just how close 
he came to his enemy uncle, Cooke of course never knew, 
but in a Confederate advance he picked up and later pre- 
served in his scrap-book an envelope addressed to him. 
The Pendletons and Kennedys, and others of Cooke's kin 



76 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

who lived near the upper Potomac, witnessed in their fam- 
ilies a division similar to that among the Cookes. Here 
then was the basis for the pitting of relative against relative 
— a characteristic of the plot of each of Cooke's Civil War 
romances, and of nearly all later stories of the Civil War. 
Cooke 's military career really began before the Civil War. 
He joined the Richmond Howitzers, apparently in the 
late fifties, and was despatched to Harper's Ferry upon 
the occasion of the John Brown raid. At the beginning 
of the war, the company of Howitzers was expanded to a 
battalion and Cooke was made a sergeant, in which capacity 
he commanded a gun at First Manassas. "He was pow- 
der-blackened, ' ' wrote George Cary Eggleston, who chanced 
to see him on the field of battle, "and he had lost both his 
coat and his hat in the eagerness of his service at the piece ; 
but during a brief pause in the firing he greeted me with 
a rammer in his hand and all the old cheeriness in his face 
and voice." Cooke was soon a first lieutenant, was recom- 
mended for a captaincy, and was sent to Richmond in 1862 
to recruit a company for the Horse Artillery. Whether or 
not success was achieved by his advertisement in a paper and 
by his poster headed "100 Patriotic Men Wanted," he does 
not say, but by March he was chafing terribly under the in- 
action. "My valley," he wrote, "my cousins, nieces, and 
the graves of my brothers are in possession of a brutal and 
infamous foe. Banks is ere now master of Winchester." 
Cooke describes a splendid review of Stuart's cavalry on 
Franklin Street. The youthful general is ready for Cooke 
as soon as he is commissioned. "My whole heart goes out 
to that gallant defender of our liberties ... if I can only 
get my commission and be sent to Yorktown where there 
is imminent danger of a fight — this may be the last entry in 
this book I will ever make — if I fall the enemy will have 
stilled a heart as true as any that beats, to the Southern 



THE CIVIL WAR 77 

land." He speaks of the likelihood of being detailed as 
a private for some local police-work. "So be it," he con- 
cludes. "Any capacity that helps the cause suits me." 

Cooke was soon again to see active service with Stuart 
in the famous ride around McClellan. "It was a splendid 
affair," he recorded on June 16, "and Stuart is the king 
of the hour. ... I will only say that I was busy all the 
expedition: carrying orders up and down the line every- 
where — and that Gen. Jeb. (in the words of the 'Dispatch') 
seemed 'pleased' with me. I don't care whether he was 
or not — I know I did the best I could, and on the chicken 
hominy, as Captain Von Borcke calls it, I laughed and 
joked, and cheered the men, when the river was in front 
and — Gen. Cooke in the rear ! They sent for him I heard, 
and Stuart escaped him. Stuart must be a great general to 
foil his father-in-law. ... I think Gen. Cooke a man of 
first rate military genius. Why did not he follow the hoof 
marks on a dirt road of 2000 cavalry? Perhaps what Mrs. 
Morris says is true — that he is perfectly miserable and 
hopes the first ball will kill him. Sad, very sad. . . . 
Well, here I am where I never expected to be. I doubted 
if I would arrive. . . . Gen. Jeb. is a trump, and I am tired 
and sleepy. 25 times asleep in the saddle. 

Cooke seems to have served continuously in the defense of 
the capital against McClellan. In the middle of July he 
was in Richmond, "home again after Cold Harbor, the 
White House, and Charles City," was "sick and languid 
from bile caught in the White Oak Swamp," and was chaf- 
ing at the army's failure to assume a constant offensive. 
"If I get thro' this war I will have much to write of — if. 
My notes of the great trip with Jackson's army to Cold 
Harbor and back, are in my little book 1 which I carry in 

1 The loss of this diary left the first two years of Cooke's war 
service largely unrecorded. -. 



78 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

my breast pocket — written on the field and fresh with the 
spirit of the moment. . . . The war groes [sic] tiresome 
— very. "When will it end? The lying Northern prints 
prolong it — following the beck of a bestial, foul-souled ad- 
ministration. I see but one hope of a speedy end to it — the 
English fleet. But to that we should not, and will not look." 

Perhaps on the basis of his participation in Stuart's ride, 
Cooke received his regular commission as Captain of Artil- 
lery in July, 1862. "Here I am," he wrote in Richmond 
on August 17, "smoking in my room, on Sunday evening — 
having been sent down by mon general [sic] on Ordnance 
business. I have gone up with him one step — being now 
'Captain of Artillery/ and 'Ord. Off. Stuart's Cav. Divn.' 
Another bar upon the collar and the cuff — and some more 
satisfaction. My boy 1 is safe again after 'Cedar Run.' 
But poor Dick Cunningham is gone — my old friend and 
comrade. God rest him! This book will go under lock 
and key directly ; so — we are on the march to take the front 
of Jackson's army, which will press the vulgar bully Pope 
to the wall. Then, ho! for Maryland and Pennsylvania. 
The war grows more desperate with every battle — and must 
soon end. God grant it. For me, I am agreeably fixed 
with Stuart ; some fine fellows on the staff — some very poor 
company — and I like my life; making myself busy and 
useful. I dream, between times, of happier times, of tran- 
quil country haunts, of writing, pondering on those times 
with Nat and my dear ones around me. May God the all 
Merciful preserve my boy and all my dear ones, and me — 
but more than our lives, our souls. To Him, be glory and 
praise and submission. Still: Esperance! Toujours." 

After about a year's service as captain, part of the time 

i Philip Pendleton Cooke's eldest son, Nathaniel, often referred 
to as Nat. 



THE CIVIL WAR 79 

as aide-de-camp to Stuart, Cooke had, in the words of his 
friend Eggleston, earned a reputation for "nonchalance 
under fire" and an "eager readiness to undertake Stuart's 
most perilous missions," and was recommended by the 
great cavalryman as a major for his staff with transfer from 
artillery to ordnance. Eggleston gives a delightful account 
of the dramatic way in which Stuart chose to break the news 
to Cooke: 

" 'You're about my size, Cooke,' Stuart said, 'but you're not so 
broad in the chest.' 

" 'Yes, I am,' answered Cooke. 

" 'Let's see if you are,' said Stuart, taking off his coat as if strip- 
ping for a boxing match. 'Try that on.' 

"Cooke donned the coat with its three stars on the collar, and 
found it a fit. 

" 'Cut off two of the stars,' commanded Stuart, 'and wear the 
coat to Richmond. Tell the people in the War Department to make 
you a major and send you back in a hurry. I'll need you tomorrow.' " 

This promotion was approved by Lee who at once began 
to call Cooke Major, a title bestowed upon him throughout 
the remainder of his life by his comrades in arms. General 
Cooper of the Richmond staff ruled, however, that Stuart 
already had his full complement of majors, but gave Cooke 
a temporary transfer to the Ordnance Department. Lieu- 
tenants Freanor and Ryals and Captain White of Stuart's 
division were soon advanced over Cooke, and he entered a 
protest. He was a personal friend of the three officers, 
was not jealous of their promotion, but wished if possible 
to remove the reflection on his ability as an officer occa- 
sioned thereby. Although making no formal complaint, 
he urged that something be done. But Lee, Stuart, and his 
own efforts could not avail. He was still a captain at the 
end of the war. 

Cooke was permanently grieved by this failure to advance 
in grade and never understood why he was not promoted. 



80 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

He preserved all the documents in the case to show the 
high quality of his recommendations. The secret of the 
matter seems to lie in certain eventualities that grew out 
of his being a man of letters. The Life of Stonewall Jack- 
son, which appeared soon after the general's death in 1863, 
contains quietly worded passages which might well have 
nettled a high-handed and inexperienced administration. 
Cooke, like Jackson, was unalterably of the party which 
pleaded for a policy of following up successes with the view 
of destroying the retreating army. The aim of the staff 
at the capital seemed to him less the winning of the war 
than the protection of Richmond. Cooke had also been a 
leading contributor to the Messenger, and the Messenger 
was constantly flaying the administration. Besides the 
Life of Jackson, which was really only an account of Jack- 
son 's battles, he wrote poems and long dispatches for the 
Richmond papers. His maps of battles made their way into 
the press. In his "Outlines from the Outpost," in the 
Southern Illustrated News, Cooke spoke in superlative 
terms of the Stonewall Brigade. This was not always ap- 
preciated — elicited, in fact, expressions of disapproval from 
excited readers. "I see no reason," wrote one, "why the 
Army of the Potomac, except the Stonewall Brigade, should 
not be disbanded and sent home, and leave that immortal 
Brigade which has done all the fighting to crown themselves 
with immortality by ending the war alone." An illiterate 
private, or more probably someone posing as such, wrote: 
' ' the Solgars is hard down on that artical tell that Riter f o 
God Sak to stop it." In the case of Cooke, the writer was, 
thus, never fully submerged in the soldier, and the writer 
always said what he thought or wished to say. To deny 
promotion upon such grounds, is natural, if not noble ; but 
Cooke was too high-souled to suspect the apparent reason 
for his having never obtained his majority. 



THE CIVIL WAR 81 

Cooke's numerous staff duties caused him to see much of 
the generals of the Army of Northern Virginia. He nar- 
rates some interesting anecdotes. "Gen. Early and Gov. 
Letcher lived with us. Early a gay old militaire: he and 
the Gov. running each other incessantly." Stuart was 
famous for his liking for music. He recruited his band 
from the best talent of his command — in at least one case 
to the great displeasure of Colonel, later Brigadier-General, 
Thomas T. Munford. 1 While Cooke wrote in his tent on 
army and personal matters the great cavalryman would 
often be singing "Her bright smile haunts me still," or 
other favorite songs. High officers were sometimes flip- 
pant. Gordon severely teased Venable in a "discussion of 
the propriety or impropriety of kissing — Gordon urging 
former with a side wink" at Cooke, while Venable re- 
mained " horrorstruck and indignantly virtuous." In the 
case of the enemy, jokes were sometimes replaced by po- 
tentially serious moves. Having captured a Federal offi- 
cer's trunk containing beautiful letters from a wife and 
obscene ones from a mistress reveling in the wife's igno- 
rance of the relation, Stuart sent all of them to the wife, 
Cooke inferring, doubtless correctly, that there would be a 
"fuss in that family." But "Yankee" officers were not 
always sordid. Philip Pendleton Cooke's daughters were 
in occupied territory and "a Yankee Lieut." brought to 

i "The Sweeneys, two quite celebrated minstrels, had enlisted in 
the Appomattox Company of my Regt.; they were great banjo and 
violinists, and General Stuart's feet would shuffle at their presence 
or naming. He issued an order for them to report at his quarters 
and 'detained them.' It was a right he enjoyed, but not very pleas- 
ing to me or my Regiment. 'Music hath charms to soothe the savage 
breast.' When Capt. Cooke was on Stuart's staff he used to laugh 
at me for 'not coming over to enjoy our music,' until it came to 
be a sore subject to me." — General Munford to J. 0. B., January 
14, 1917. 



82 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

Pennie with his compliments a copy of the New York edi- 
tion of her uncle's Life of Stonewall Jackson. ''On the 
road to the second Manassas," Cooke saw Lee, who as usual 
impressed him profoundly: "Gen. Lee's attitude was what 
I have always seen in him everywhere — one of invincible, 
supreme repose : and settled resolution — as of a man whom 
no reverse can dismay, and no anxiety flurry. This, which 
I have seen, a hundred times, convinces me that Lee is, in 
the foundation of his character, as in the superstructure, 
a very great man. No man in public affairs now, is so great 
a type of the great Virginia race. He reminds me always 
of my father." 

In his various capacities Cooke was often detailed on 
long journeys, alone or with but few attendants. He en- 
joyed the chincapins, chestnuts, persimmons, and wild 
grapes which, in season, abounded in rural Virginia. In 
all save one or two cases he was fed gladly by those at whose 
houses he stopped, and often rewarded graciousness by a 
word in his diary. "Went with Major Peyton to Mr. Finks' 
— Bob Hunter and Ben Turner along — and got 'refresh- 
ments' liquid and solid. Fell in love with Miss Lucy's lips 
and dimples — she is very like Pelham. She knew Farley; 
he had often been there . . . bless her! — also Mrs. Finks. 
Dimples in former; kindness in latter, overwhelming." But 
Cooke's good words were not spoken of the upper classes 
only. The possession of social privileges did not make him 
disagreeable either toward colored persons or toward whites 
less well situated in the world. Before the war the Cooke 
family went once, upon invitation, to eat a dinner prepared 
for them by Mammy Giddy in her Richmond cabin. "I 
must speak of Miss Lang," says Cooke in his war-diary, 
describing a hospitable reception on one of his journeys. 
"She was a girl of sixteen or seventeen apparently, of the 
poorer class. . . . She . . . had the softest, sweetest voice I 



THE CIVIL WAR 83 

think I ever heard. She was tolerably good-looking — wore 
no hoops — and lent me with a smile Sue's 'Ater Gull' [sic], 
'Female Bluebeard' and other blood and thunder romances, 
picked up from the Yankees." He further records that she 
attended to his "supper-cravings" with "great good na- 
ture, ' ' and concludes : ' ' May she be happy. ' ' Cooke not only 
supplied himself with personal accessories such as a rain- 
coat, a blanket, and a pair of trousers, upon a Federal re- 
treat, but on more than one occasion made additions to his 
library. Between his duties and his writing he naturally 
had no time for an extended course of reading. In camp, 
however, he had a habit of rising early to read chapter after 
chapter in the Bible by firelight before taking up the day's 
duties, and devoted himself assiduously to such serious 
works as Bourrienne's Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte. 

A young lady of Cooke's chance acquaintance urged 
him to be sufficiently brave, but not reckless. He may not 
have been unduly reckless habitually, but he soon learned 
on his rides not to let the enemy hurry him too quickly 
from a meal. Once, in Fauquier, he was driven away from 
a "party en regie — low necks, bare arms, fine dresses," 
by an excited cavalryman who mistakenly supposed the 
enemy was approaching. He finally reached the stage where 
he would continue to eat from a plate standing by his 
horse until a hostile scouting squad was within two hundred 
yards, and then toss down his coffee and gallop away. 

On Lee's advance into Pennsylvania Cooke's entertain- 
ment in Maryland was quite as generous as it was in Vir- 
ginia, though such was not the fate of the army as a whole. 
Maryland youth seemed to be fascinated by the Southern 
cause. The Confederate cavalry was given an enthusiastic 
reception by the young ladies of the Rockville female semi- 
nary who flocked to the windows in holiday costume waving 
sheet music bearing Confederate flags. Cooke, however, 



84 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

met in Maryland one situation which baffled him. When 
the Confederates occupied Westminster, he was detailed to 
search the house of a Captain Wampler and bring away the 
United States Post Office money which was known to be con- 
cealed in it. The captain was ostensibly suffering too much 
to speak, and his little daughter conducted the unwelcome 
visitor through the various rooms. Cooke became very 
much ashamed at rummaging among her garments and 
trinkets, was sure the man had the money beneath him in 
bed, but did not have the heart to move him as he was crying 
out in pain with his wife at his side. Cooke said he would 
search no more houses if the ladies objected. A feature 
of the Northern advance was the purchase of articles at a 
reasonable price. In Virginia, after buying the cloth, Cooke 
had had to pay $175 for the mere tailoring of a suit ; and 
at Christmas, 1863, when he went to see his sister Sal he 
carried two pounds of candy which had cost $8 a pound. 

Many of Cooke's war notes were written in winter quar- 
ters in 1863-64 near Orange. He was comfortably estab- 
lished in an abode which he called the "Wigwam:" "My 
tent is on the side of the hill, just above the general's and 
I have a huge stone fireplace, built by myself, a bed of logs, 
plank, and Yankee tick, stuffed with hay — desk here on the 
right : plank hearth ; saddle on crosspiece in the corner 
to my right ..." In this retreat he recorded the personal 
element in his campaigning, and took stock of his imagined 
aging, of his lessening susceptibility to female beauty. 
"What ails me. I dream no longer — and 'love' no one — 
in the romantic sense. Am I growing cold, as I certainly 
am getting old? The gayest eyes do not move Mr. Joy- 
euse Gent. 1 The other day Marion Skelton who is certainly 
a perfect little beauty was so outrageous as to put her head 

i "Tristan Joyeuse, Gent." was a pseudonym under which Cooke 
published some of his fugitive ante-bellum work. 



THE CIVIL WAR 85 

on one side, look at me coquettishly, and murmur as the 
romance writers say, in a languid tone, with a golden smile, 
'you needn't try to resist and stay away — for you'll find 
at last, you can't live without me!' ... I could have 
kissed the pretty mouth that uttered the words, and was 
then so near — but sentiments of propriety forbade. And 
the words scarcely moved this old bird of 33." 

Of late '64 and early '65 Cooke had nothing to say. A 
crushing sense of the futility of further struggle for the 
Southern cause probably descended upon him, just as the 
numerous deaths in his family bore down his spirit at the 
close of the fifties. He kept no diary ; and sisters, nephew, 
and nieces complained of not hearing from him for months. 
Fighting as he did at First Manassas and surrendering at 
Appomattox, Cooke always considered it remarkable that 
he never received a wound. In his diary he checked off 
his fallen friends and relatives, and recounted his escapes. 
Once a bullet struck a fence but a few inches from his head ; 
again, he was stunned by a bursting shell and was covered 
by the thrown-up earth. It was, however, an old habit to 
close every entry with an expression of hope in God, and 
he saw fulfilled his reiterated wish to be allowed to return 
to his beloved Valley. After Stuart's death at Yellow 
Tavern, Cooke had been assigned to the staff of General 
Pendleton and was his inspector-general of horse artillery 
when the end came. Paroled at Appomattox, he is said 
to have buried his silver spurs upon the field to avoid de- 
livering them to his late foes. 

Cooke's parents had never owned a home in Richmond. 
They and his brothers were dead, and the city's periodicals 
had been wrecked by the war — so Cooke now regarded 
Richmond neither as his home nor as a suitable place for 
earning a livelihood. . . . One sister lived in Amelia, and 
one in New Kent, but the great bulk of his relative? 



86 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

lived in the neighborhood of Winchester. ' ' My first thought 
on the surrender," he wrote, "was to go to Amelia — get 
my two horses fat on grass — sell them — go to N. Y. — write, 
and look Paris-ward." But the more practical if less im- 
aginative Ned Dandridge said "Come on, let's go home." 
Cooke and two others joined him, and covered in nine 
days the distance from Appomattox to the Valley neigh- 
borhood where the writer's civilian life was to be renewed 
among his relatives and amid the scenes of his boyhood. 

When Cooke reached the lower valley he stopped at ' ' The 
Vineyard," the home of the family of his brother Philip, 
for a month of idleness and rest — needed, one can well 
imagine, by a veteran of Lee's army. During the summer 
he made several visits, but in the fall settled definitely 
at "The Vineyard." Since Cooke had owned no real 
estate, the end of the war had left him absolutely penniless. 
He was not, however, without potential assets. He had an 
enlarged life of Jackson in manuscript; he had, of course, 
his reputation as a writer; and he had a vast unworked 
field to draw upon for subject-matter. His military duties 
and achievements; his acquaintance with the great Con- 
federate leaders while they were in action ; his diary-chroni- 
cled adventures of securing food, seeing pretty women, and 
escaping death — these were not the only features of Cooke's 
four years of war. He had carried into his experiences a 
romantic turn of mind, and in every lurking figure saw — 
at least in retrospect — not only a wary spy, but a person on 
sinister private business. Remote places were easily peopled 
in his imagination by characters intent upon crime, or 
escape, or vengeance. 

Cooke's material for writing was thus of a threefold na- 
ture. He might devote himself to the history of the period, 
he might record anecdotes and personal reminiscences, or 
he might use his experience as the basis of fiction. In fact, 



THE CIVIL WAR 87 

he used the same material in all three ways. His writings 
on the Civil War are easily classified. The biographies of 
Lee and Jackson together cover the main events of the war 
in Virginia. Surry of Eagle's-Nest is a close parallel of 
Jackson, just as Mohun is of Lee — the major events are 
the same, the novels having an interweaving of fiction. The 
same material served further as the basis for Cooke's numer- 
ous periodical articles, the best of which he collected into 
volume form under the titles Wearing of the Gray and 
Hammer and Rapier. Hilt to Hilt stands slightly apart 
from Cooke's other books on the War; it is a novel dealing 
with Mosby's field of action, in particular the lower Valley 
of Virginia. 

Cooke did not find it hard to resume writing. His home 
surroundings were propitious. Even while campaigning, he 
had given himself considerable practice by his contribu- 
tions to the Confederate newspapers, and now after the war 
he frequently received letters urging him to use his pen in 
defence of the prostrate South. Fitzhugh Lee even sug- 
gested the facetious title "Southern Generals, who they 
are and what they done," and upon another occasion wrote: 

"I send you a document — and now you, d it, put me on 

the highest pinnacle of history that my young ones (after 
I get them) may crawl up and read of their daddy's doings 
in bygone days." Cooke, moreover, was always a facile 
writer. His only problem now was to be more gentle in 
the epithets applied to the North, and this perhaps was 
not a very hard task. By the summer of 1865 he had begun 
his contributions to the New York World. He received ten 
dollars a column and the cash in hand was a godsend. The 
first book he thought of was a revised biography of Jackson. 

A Life of Stonewall Jackson had been written by Cooke 
at the ' ' persevering requests of Ayres and Wade, ' ' was pub- 
lished by them in Richmond in 1863, and was pirated and 



88 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

brought out in New York at approximately the same time 
by Charles B. Richardson. This work was the basis of the 
bulkier Stonewall Jackson: a Military Biography which D. 
Appleton and Company published in 1866. The first book 
was begun ' ' under a breadth of canvass ' ' at Stuart 's camp 
east of Orange Court House early in May, 1863, and there- 
after was continued from place to place as war duties per- 
mitted. Its composition was attended by the physical diffi- 
culties occasioned by chattering officers, flaring candles, and 
intermittent fighting. It was "written in a tent, on the 
outpost ; the enemy yonder, almost in view — but with Jack- 
son, alas ! no longer in front. The real historian of his life 
will write in a quiet study, in the tranquil days of peace, 
with no enemy, let us hope, anywhere in view, on all the 
vast horizon of the Confederate States." Cooke stated 
that the account was given largely "in the words of Gen- 
eral Jackson's official reports," but he relied considerably 
upon newspaper accounts both Northern and Southern, as 
well as upon the testimony of eye-witnesses, including him- 
self. The manuscript was "entrusted to Col. Tyler A. A. 
G., for transmission to Richmond. But it didn't go! It 
was put by someone in the P. 0. at Winchester, without 
stamps — a friend recognized my hand and paid them — and 
the ms, at last, about August, reached the publishers." 

With only four pages devoted to the first thirty-seven 
years of the life of a man who was killed at thirty-nine, 
the book as a life is absurdly disproportioned. It is, how- 
ever, much more interesting than its expanded later edition. 
It is unique among Cooke's works in that it was written 
not in the United States, but in the Confederacy before 
the Southern star had begun to decline at Gettysburg. The 
Northern army is shown as Cooke saw it in the early sum- 
mer of 1863. For many of the Federal generals he has no 
adverse comment, but he cannot tolerate Pope. "Let us 



THE CIVIL WAR 89 

not speak of him with indignation, or in terms of labored 
insult. Opprobrious epithets cannot reach him; and the 
present writer would derive no satisfaction from dwelling 
on the fact that Gen. Pope, as all now concede, was a brag- 
gart, a poltroon, guilty of systematic falsehood ; and proved 
to have perpetrated in his own person outrages which 
mark the low-born, and low-bred wretch." "Booty and 
beauty" is stated by Cooke to have been the watchword 
of Pope's army. "Some companies seemed to be of a decent 
agricultural or mechanical complexion," he quotes from 
the Reverend Mr. George of Culpeper County. The Irish 
were not too bad, but Sigel's "Germans" were "about as 
cleanly and intellectual as the overgrown sows of 'der 
Vaterland.' " "Next came the selected assassins and 
thieves, who were probably received upon certificates of 
their actual conviction and service in the penitentiaries. 
And last, and worst of all, the Puritans and psalm-singers 
of pious New England." The book is permeated with an 
absolute belief that Almighty God would assure the 
ultimate triumph of the Southern cause. Such confidence 
tended to lead to a last-ditch resistance and must have 
added a quintessence of pain to the physical calamity of 
defeat. 

The Life of Stonewall Jackson is studded with superla- 
tives and has a rapid militant style. Written under strong 
emotional pressure, it contains many passages which exhibit 
the sumptuousness of the older type of Southern public 
speech. With the view of having the work published in 
London, Cooke revised and enlarged it in the winter of 
1863-64; and sent a copy, through "Mr. Benjamin's State 
Department," to England. Commissioner Mason, to whom 
it was directed, wrote in the fall of 1865 that it had never 
been received. The original of the expanded Jackson was 
put in the hands of Cooke's sister Mary, who buried it in 



90 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

the earth when Richmond was burned. This copy was not 
lost; but was, of course, not well adapted to publication 
in the United States after the war. Cooke, therefore, 
"watered" it to suit the changed times and — despite the 
two wholly distinct editions — the life of Jackson as he 
liked it best was never given to the public. 

The Appletons prepared a superb make-up for the post- 
bellum Stonewall Jackson, embellishing it with full-page 
engravings of the famous generals of the opposing armies, 
and binding some of the copies handsomely in leather 
decorated with gold. Meanwhile Richardson, hearing of 
the new book, hastened to bring out a reprint of his edition. 
Cooke prevented the use of his name, acknowledging the 
authorship for the first time, the work having previously 
been spoken of in the North as presumably by the Richmond 
editor, John M. Daniel. Richardson's reprint was followed 
shortly by the Appleton Jackson, which, according to Cooke, 
"was exquisitely printed, but too high priced, and had 
only a sale d'estime." Although nearly twice as long as 
the earlier book, the newer requires no particular comment. 
Like its predecessor, it is a record of campaigns in which 
Jackson participated, but in general deals with him not 
much more intimately than with other officers of high 
rank. It is emphatically not a biography in the usual sense. 
A realization of the truth of this may have influenced the 
substitution of "military biography" for "life" in the 
title of the enlarged work. 

The pay from the World and the prospects from Jack- 
son were encouraging. "I wanted ready money however," 
Cooke later recorded in his literary notes, "and wrote to 
Richardson — before our misunderstanding — saying that I 
' wanted ' $200 : and if he would advance that amt. I would 
furnish him in the fall of that year with the ms. of an 
historical romance, bringing in Stuart etc. — a book on the 



THE CIVIL WAR 91 

war. He replied courteously that he only published histories 
but had some friends in the same building with him, to 
whom he would hand my letter — which he did. They were 
Bunce & Huntington, — Bunce being the head man, — and 
Bunce wrote me at once a very cordial letter, accepting my 
proposition and authorizing me to draw on him for $200. 
I did so, and remember what a fortune I considered it. I 
was penniless, had to borrow the paper upon which to write 
the World sketches." The book whose future was thus 
mortgaged was Surry of Eagle' s-N est ; or the Memoirs of a 
Staff-Officer serving in Virginia, Edited from the mss. of 
Colonel Surry. Cooke intended to make the book largely 
autobiographical. ' ' Occurred to me, I think this spring of 
1865," he wrote, "tho' the idea had 'come across' me, I 
believe, in 1864 at Petersburg." Work was begun in 
August, but was " resumed in earnest" about September 
15, the first part being almost wholly rewritten. The book 
was finished on November 1. The author had been fre- 
quently cheered along in the composition by visits to the 
Page seat of "Saratoga," and he spent a delightful Christ- 
mas at "The Vineyard" — he had on hand proof-sheets of 
both Surry and Jackson, and among the guests was a most 
attractive lady, Miss Mary Francis Page, who was later to 
become Mrs. Cooke. 

Surry of Eagle's-Nest, to a degree unapproaehed by even 
the most subjective of the ante-bellum romances, was written 
out of the fullness of its author's life and experience. May 
Beverley, the heroine, may be taken as a portrait of Miss 
Page. Like the girl of the Valley, the girl of the book 
sings the well-known Verdi airs to an appreciative lover. 
Charles Beverley is perhaps Mary Page's brother Powel, 
who was a close friend of Cooke. Surry, like the author, 
is a staff-officer. General Turner Ashby's objection to 
searching the belongings of ladies may well have been 



92 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

copied from Cooke's own recorded experience. The letter 
from "N'iniporte" about Pelham was actually received 
by Cooke. The preponderating war element was drawn 
from the author's own service and observation. 

The story begins in the exciting preparatory days of 
Richmond in 1861. The hero, Surry, comes into contact 
with a cowardly dandy, Baskerville, in company with whom 
is a young woman endowed with all the beauties and virtues. 
He also sees a mysterious duel in Hollywood Cemetery. 
Soon, however, Surry is commissioned a captain, is as- 
signed as aide-de-camp to Jackson, and sets out for Harper 's 
Ferry. Passing through the Spottsylvania wilderness he 
comes upon a house inhabited by an insane woman, a 
beautiful girl, and a third female, a keen-eyed treacherous- 
looking employee. Nearer the Blue Ridge he is stunned 
by a limb blown from a tree in a storm, and is carried to 
' ' The Oaks, ' ' the seat of Colonel Beverley, the father of the 
beauty he saw with Baskerville. May 's father had covenanted 
with the now dead Baskerville, Senior, that their children 
should marry, and May has at fifteen engaged herself to a 
now despised but persistent suitor. Surry is wholly enam- 
ored of May, but as a brave man and a soldier he merely 
takes a Browningesque "last ride" with her and goes away. 
While in the neighborhood, however, he becomes acquainted 
with the moody and retiring Mordaunt, who is always ac- 
companied by a faithful Arab youth, Achmed. The war now 
sets to work on these characters and the plot is evolved. 
Baskerville, a slacker in war, is quite willing to release 
May when the loss of her slaves deprives her of her wealth, 
and Surry's path is made smooth. Charley marries Sur- 
ry's sister, and Will Surry, the Unionist member of the 
family, marries a Miss Jennie Clayton provided for the 
purpose. 

There remains a sub-plot — the dark and sinister ele- 



THE CIVIL WAR 93 

ment in the book. The duelists whom Surry saw in Holly- 
wood are Mordaunt and Fenwick. The former later oper- 
ates with the Confederate army; the latter, with the Fed- 
eral. Some years previously Mordaunt was successful in 
winning the affections of a girl whom the two men loved. 
Fenwick, nursing a desire for vengeance, thereupon caused 
the wife to leave home with him by pretending through a 
forged letter that the temporarily absent husband re- 
quested it. A victim of ''puerperal fever" she lost her 
mind and was confined in an asylum, Mordaunt being in- 
formed that she had eloped with the evasive Fenwick. In 
the rough and tumble times of the war, Mrs. Mordaunt 's 
innocence is established and she dies, whereupon Mordaunt 
marries Violet Grafton, who is a living physical duplicate 
of the dead woman in her youthful courtship days. After 
many combats Fenwick is killed, not by Mordaunt but by 
the latter 's faithful Achmed who receives his own death- 
wound, his exit being necessary, since he and his master 
love the same woman. In the general disentanglement of 
the plot, Mordaunt finds the son whom he has never seen. 
For this young man, who has been known as Harry Sal- 
toun, a Miss Henrietta Fitzhugh is provided as a wife. 

"Has the reader forgotten Miss Henrietta Fitzhugh?" 
asks the author who rightly supposes the characters diffi- 
cult to keep up with, since many of them appear only oc- 
casionally in the lulls between the battles. In one place, 
more than a hundred pages deal uninterruptedly with the 
war. "It appears to me that my memoirs are becoming 
a pure and simple history of the war in Virginia," writes 
Surry. The alternate consideration of great events and 
the fates of the characters is common to historical novelists, 
but in the present case the actual persons are delineated 
with as great minuteness as the fictitious ones, and no dis- 
tinction is made between them. Surry is at once a re- 



I 



94 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

flection of its author's faults and an earnest of what he 
might have achieved. If Cooke had forgotten his over- 
worked Irvingesque habit of " editing" a supposed manu- 
script, had left out the Mordaunt-Fenwick plot, had even 
left out the big events of history, and — as he first intended 
— had given in his fluent, agreeable style an account of his 
experiences, his book might have been of perennial interest. 
In its actual form Surry has too much history to be ex- 
cellent fiction ; and it mingles the real Farley, Pelham, and 
others with fictitious persons of the same and higher rank 
to such a degree that as history it is sometimes confusing 
and in small details actually misinforming. The attempted 
blending of two distinct elements, a wildly improbable 
Gothic tale and a record of a career in the Civil War, re- 
sults in a species of romance for which no large numbers 
of later general readers — boys perhaps excepted — are likely 
to have a pronounced taste. 

The composition of Surry occupied about six weeks, and 
the results of the haste are plainly seen. Portions of Stone- 
wall Jackson are incorporated bodily. There are stylistic 
faults. Rapidity of composition may be blamed for such 
banalities as a "long farewell to the only woman he had 
ever loved," but it is hard to believe that so practiced a 
writer as Cooke would have introduced the chapters "Ar- 
cades Ambo" and "Mordaunt's Secret," in which Fenwick 
— solely for the benefit of Surry, who is at the window- 
shutter and must be informed somehow — narrates Mor- 
daunt 's history to the Parkins woman who knows it already. 
Cooke furthermore almost revives the dead. Fenwick is 
once referred to as "dying." Several years later he is 
pinned to a tree by a sword-thrust through the middle and 
is left drooping and seemingly dead. The illustrator of 
the book gave him a most thoroughly dooming wound, as 
he should have done in following the text, but again the 



THE CIVIL WAR 95 

villain comes back alive. Each of these reappearances is a 
distinct shock to the reader. The Arabic-speaking Mor- 
daunt and his Arab servant prove that, after all, the war 
was not in itself sufficiently romantic for Cooke, who sought 
in the Old World the most melodramatic part of his plot. 
Surry owes something to Henry St. John. The Mordaunt- 
Fenwick and Ralph-Foy pairs are similar. Parkins is of 
the breed of Miss Carne. The gloomy world-traveled Mor- 
daunt inevitably suggests Byron and the titular hero of 
Mrs. Augusta Evans Wilson's St. Elmo. The behavior of 
the insane wife may well have been suggested by Great 
Expectations as hostile critics were not averse to pointing 
out. George Cary Eggleston, taking up Bagby's criticism, 
already referred to, said of Surry that its author indeed 
"had the pink goggles," but that they were important now 
to give the sanity and the perspective of history to recent 
events. In doing this he felt Cooke to be without parallel. 
Whether or not this praise is too high, Surry was above all 
else a timely book. It was not penned with the care ex- 
pected in a great modern historical novel. It must, how- 
ever, have afforded pleasant reading to many a veteran ; for 
it showed the war not as a failure, but as a superb adventure, 
the very participation in which was a mark of honor. Even 
to-day it is an agreeable volume for Southerners and others 
who are interested in the Civil War, like a stirring tale, 
and do not read too critically. Upon its appearance Surry 
had an excellent sale. It was published in February, 1866, 
and by the end of 1870 Cooke had received from it over 
$2,313. Smaller royalties continued. Financially this 
was the most successful of his novels. The interest in war 
stories waned with great rapidity, and no one of Cooke's 
later romances secured so definite a hold on popular ap- 
proval. 

Cooke went to New York in the early spring of 1866. 



96 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

"Saw Gen. Cooke," he writes, "and was received with the 
warmest affection by him and Aunt as I expected. I always 
felt as if I had much more against him than he against 
me. . . . Duyckinck was a good friend and as kind as 
ever, going with me everywhere. Was at Appleton's, 
Huntington's, Scribner's, etc., and everywhere courteously 
received — old W. H. Appleton assuring me he was greatly 
pleased to see me. . . . Scribner proposed Wearing of the 
Gray — the sort of book : not the title, which he wished 
afterwards changed to Lee and His Lieutenants (a title 
proposed to him by myself, abandoned by me as unsuitable 
for the book; and then Mr. Pollard adopted the name, 
publishing with Treat & Co., of which firm Scribner was a 
member)." In view of this account of his reception in the 
North it is somewhat surprising that Cooke should say of 
the same trip : " I can 't bear the Yankees : like them less 
than ever. They and we are two people." It should be 
remembered, however, that Cooke was writing in 1866. 

About this time Cooke was offered by Richardson $2000 
for a work on the "heroic women of the South." The idea 
was abandoned, however, for no interesting material could 
be assembled. The truth was that the women's work, 
however noble and valuable, was not spectacular; and no 
vitally interesting portraits could be drawn — especially by 
a writer of Cooke 's type of talent. Worry over the imprac- 
ticable "Southern Women" and a contemplated life of Lee, 
"with some other private affairs which took up much 
time, ' ' caused the compilation, Wearing of the Gray, to con- 
sume the summer and autumn of 1866. 

Wearing of the Gray was brought out at New York in 
1867 by E. B. Treat and Company. It was handsomely 
printed and was illustrated with "portraits engraved on 
steel from photographs taken from life" and with "battle 
scenes from original designs." The new volume "was 



THE CIVIL WAR 97 

made up largely of the World, News, and other articles, 
written in 1865-66, others from the Richmond 111. News, 
etc., etc.," but several of the pieces — including "To Gettys- 
burg and Back Again," "A Dash at Aldie," and "General 
Pegram on the Night Before His Death" — had not been 
previously published. Wearing of the Gray bears the in- 
scription: "To the illustrious memory of Major-General J. 
E. B. Stuart, 'Flower of Cavaliers,' This Book is Dedicated 
by an old member of his Staff, who loved him living, and 
mourns him dead." The forty-seven component papers 
were classified under five heads : ' ' Personal Portraits, " "In 
the Cavalry," "Outlines from the Outpost," "Scout Life," 
and ' ' Latter Days. ' ' A picture of Stuart was chosen as the 
frontispiece and a sketch of him opens the list of personal 
portraits. Cooke aimed "to draw these 'worthies' rather 
as they lived and moved, following their various idiosyn- 
crasies, than as they performed their official duties on the 
public stage. ... No personage is spoken of with whom 
the writer was not more or less acquainted: and every 
trait and incident set down was either observed by himself 
or obtained from good authority. Invention has absolutely 
nothing to do with the sketches: the writer has recorded 
his recollections, and not his fancies." As a staff-officer 
Cooke had a superb opportunity for observing the im- 
portant Confederate figures in Virginia and these portraits 
are on the whole an entertaining and valuable piece of 
work. A reader of "Stuart" feels that he knows that 
officer, his love of music, color, and pretty women, his 
abhorrence of profanity and drinking, his thorough im- 
perturbability, and his joy in the face of danger. One joins 
Cooke in his admiration of the great cavalryman who ac- 
complished tasks which none of his fellows could compass, 
and yet refrained from repressing his individuality, amus- 
ing himself with banjo and song whether the more puritan- 



98 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

ical of his associates frowned on it or not. "Jackson" is a 
good short portrait condensed from the Military Biography. 
The paper on Ashby, praising a fine horseman whose exam- 
ple lived as an inspiration after his death, exhibits well one 
of the author's chief faults: even in a twelve-page sketch 
several details are stated more than once. Cooke recounts 
many interesting anecdotes about the leaders and quotes 
their words. The "bold, straightforward, masculine, and 
incisive" Early is recorded as saying to his surgeon on 
Lee 's surrender : ' ' Doctor, I wish there was powder enough 
in the center of the earth to blow it to atoms. I would 
apply the torch with the greatest pleasure." 

Of all his army service Cooke liked best the days when 
he "followed the feather" of Stuart; and that favorite 
general figures largely in the cavalry sketches. "To the 
cavalryman belongs the fresh life of the forest — the wan- 
dering existence which brings back the days of old romance. 
Do you wish to form some conception of the life of that 
model cavalryman and gentleman, Don Quixote? To do 
so, you have only to 'join the cavalry.' Like the Don, your 
cavalryman goes through the land in search of adventures, 
and finds many. He penetrates retired localities — odd, un- 
known nooks — meeting with curious characters and out-of- 
the-way experiences, which would make the fortune of a 
romance writer. Here, far away from the rushing world 
and the clash of arms, he finds bright faces, and is wel- 
comed by 'heaven's last best gift' — for woman is ever the 
guardian angel of the soldier. She smiles upon him when 
he is gloomy ; feeds him when he is hungry ; and it is often 
the musical laughter of a girl which the cavalryman hears 
as he rides on musing — not the rattle of his miserable sabre ! 
Thus romance, sentiment, and poetry meet him everywhere. 
And is he fond of the grotesque ? That meets him, too, in a 
thousand places. Of the pathetic? Ah! that salutes him 



THE CIVIL WAR 99 

often on the fierce arena of war ! Thus, living a fresh life, 
full of vivid emotions, he passes his days and nights till the 
fatal bullet comes — laughing, fighting, feasting, starving, to 
the end. ' ' Cooke tells, for instance, of a raid on a deserted 
grocery store which caused Stuart to be acclaimed by a 
previously grumbling army as first of the world 's soldiers ; 
he tells of a lady who spent months in a Federal prison 
because there was found in her possession a joking docu- 
ment signed by Stuart making her an honorary staff officer. 
With such material the author was an adept. 

"Uneven as it is in quality, Wearing of the Gray is never- 
theless both interesting and of solid value. Cooke felt that 
he was not only entertaining the reader of his day, but was 
recording for the future. In "One of Stuart's Escapes," 
he says, "Ah! those 'romances of the war'! The trifling 
species will come first. . . . But then will come the better 
order of things, when writers like Walter Scott will con- 
scientiously collect the real facts, and make some new 
'Waverley' or 'Legend of Montrose'." "For these, and 
not for the former class, ' ' Cooke says he is setting down his 
incidents. A pleasing touch is given by the author's fre- 
quently addressing the unknown persons who crossed his 
path in the war: "If the fair girl living in the handsome 
mansion below Mr. Hamilton 's, remembers still to whom she 
insisted upon presenting nine cups of coffee with every 
delicacy, the rebel in question begs to assure her of his con- 
tinued gratitude for her kindness." Unfortunately some 
of the papers are fiction and not history. "Longbow's 
Horse, ' ' for instance, concludes with a reference to Colonel 
Surry and May Beverley, characters in Surry of Eagle's- 
Nest. The inclusion of already published articles causes 
several anecdotes to be repeated, as in the overlapping 
1 ' Mosby ' ' and ' ' Mosby 's Raid into Fairfax. ' ' The separate 
origin of the articles results also in a style of unusual 



100 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

redundancy. Murat, Rupert, and other favorites are al- 
luded to again and again in Cooke's comparisons. A small 
but unnecessary flaw is the use of "natale solum," "gau- 
dium certaminis," ' ' immedicabile vulnus," and "perdu," 
where English words are available. Cooke was very fond of 
this show of learning and kept it up despite the disapproval 
of critics and the constant typographical errors of his uni- 
lingual printers. His camp chimney fell flat to the ground, 
whereupon he began it again, "ab ovo." The "ab ovo" 
was printed as "above," the type-setter and many readers 
doubtless wondering what manner of rock-layer Cooke was. 
Following the completion of Wearing of the Gray, Cooke 
began work on a somewhat similarly organized collection 
of twelve compositions which appeared in The Old Guard 
as The Battles of Virginia, an appropriate title inasmuch 
as Chapter I deals with First Manassas and Chapter XII 
with Lee's retreat and surrender. This manuscript was 
finished April 19, 1867; the last chapter appeared in the 
magazine in February, 1868 ; but the work was not pub- 
lished as a volume until 1870, when Carleton printed it as 
Hammer and Rapier, a title suggested by a figure in the 
"Wilderness" chapter. Cooke says of Grant's assuming 
command of the Federal army : ' ' The rapier had been tried 
for three long years, and Lee, that great swordsman, had 
parried every lunge. What was his Federal adversary of 
the huge bulk and muscle to do now, in these last days? 
One course alone was left him — to take the sledge-hammer 
in both hands, and, leaving tricks of fence aside, advance 
straightforward, and smash the rapier in pieces, blow by 
blow, shattering the arm that wielded it, to the shoulder 
blade." "Honour to obstinate resolve, and the heart that 
does not despair. Grant had them, ' ' says Cooke of the plan 
of a continuous aggressive; and with regard to Grant 'a 
conduct at Appomattox he continues: "The Federal Com- 



THE CIVIL WAR 101 

mander had acted throughout all with the generosity of a 
soldier and the breeding of a gentleman. ' ' Cooke was hon- 
est in this recognition of merit in an opponent. Even 
during the war he was never bitter against McClellan, 
Meade, or Grant, just as in peace he still upon every occa- 
sion assailed the brutality of Sheridan and Pope. Much of 
Cooke's military service was in the cavalry, and in this 
branch the superiority of the hard-riding Southerners for 
the first two years was unquestioned even in the North. 
That he was anxious to award honor wherever due is 
evidenced, however, by a description of the Northern stand 
at Port Republic : ' ' Three times the Federal artillery was 
thus lost and won, in spite of the most desperate fighting. 
All honor to courage wherever it displays itself, under the 
blue coat or under the gray ; and the Federal forces fought 
that day with a gallantry that was superb. They died 
where they stood, like brave men and true soldiers — an 
enemy records that and salutes them." 

Hammer and Rapier shows a certain knowledge of mili- 
tary tactics. The author points out that if Virginia should 
again be invaded from the north there would probably be 
new battles of Manassas, the Wilderness, and Cold Harbor. 
The twelve sketches largely parallel Cooke's military biog- 
raphies of Jackson and Lee, and the historical portions of 
Surry and Mohun. For the battles, however, Hammer and 
Rapier has the superiority of being stripped of fictitious 
and superfluous details. The following account of Pickett's 
charge is far more effective than the similar but more 
wordy record in Mohun: 

"The Virginians of Pickett form in double line, just in the edge 
of the wood on Seminary Ridge — then they are seen to move. They 
advance into the valley, supported by Pettigrew on the left, and 
Wilcox ready to follow on the right. So the division goes, into that 
Valley of Death, advancing in face of the enemy's guns at "common 



102 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

time," as the troops of Ney moved under the Russian artillery, on 
the banks of the Dnieper. 

"The two armies look on, holding their breath. It is a magnificent 
spectacle. Old soldiers, hardened in the fire of battle, flush and 
lean forward with fiery eyes. Suddenly the Federal artillery opens 
all its thunders, and the ranks are swept from end to end by round 
shot, shell, and canister. Bloody gaps are seen, but the men close 
up; the line advances slowly, as before. The fire redoubles; all the 
demons of hell seem howling, roaring, yelling, screaming, gibbering 
in one great witch's sabbat. Through the attacking column tears 
a storm of iron, before which men fall in heaps, mangled, bleeding, 
their bodies torn to pieces, their dying hands clutching the grass. 
The survivors close up the ranks and go on steadily. 

"Virginia is not poor and bare, as some suppose her. She is rich 
beyond royal or imperial dreams — for she has that charge. 

"At three hundred yards from the slope, the real conflict bursts 
forth. There the thunder of artillery is succeeded by the crash of 
musketry. From behind their stone breastwork the Federal infantry 
rise and pour a sudden and staggering fire into the assailants. Before 
that fire the troops of Pettigrew melt away. It sweeps them as dry 
leaves are swept by the wind. Where a moment before was a line 
of infantry, is now a mass of fugitives, flying wildly before the 
hurricane — the brave Pettigrew falling as he waves his sword and 
attempts to rally them. 

"The Virginians have lost the flower of their forces, but the sur- 
vivors continue to advance. In face of the concentrated fire of the 
infantry forming the Federal centre, they ascend the slope, rush 
headlong at the breastworks; storm them; strike their bayonets 
into the flying Federals; and a wild cheer rises, making the blood 
leap in the veins of a hundred thousand men. 

"They are torn to pieces, but they have carried the works. Alas! 
it is only the first line. Beyond, other earthworks frown; in their 
faces are thrust the muzzles of muskets which spout flame — the new 
line, too, must be carried, and they dash at it. 

"Then is seen a spectacle which will long be remembered — Pickett's 
little remnant charging the whole Federal army. They charge, and 
are nearly annihilated. Every step death meets them. Then the 
enemy close in on the flanks of the little band — no supporters are 
near — they fight bayonet to bayonet, and die. 

"When the torn and bleeding remnant fall back from the fatal 



THE CIVIL WAR 103 

hill, pursued by yells, shouts, musket balls, cannon shot, they present 
a spectacle which would be piteous if it were not sublime. Of the 
three brigades, a few scattered battalions only return. Where are 
the commanders? The brave Garnett killed; the gallant Armistead 
mortally wounded as he leaped his horse over the breastworks; the 
fiery Kemper lying maimed for life, under the canister whirling over 
him. Fourteen field officers out of fifteen are stretched dead and 
dying on the field. Of the men, three-fourths are dead or prisoners. 
"The battle of Gettysburg is decided." 

The day he finished Hammer and Rapier Cooke "got the 
sequel to Surry on the brain." "I however rec'd a 
proposition from Slater & Co., of the Bait. 'Home Journal' 
to write a story for them, and agreed to do so. . . . This 
led to the writing of Monksden, or the Fate of the Calverts, 
which was commenced in June, 1867 (before the 9th), and 
finished July 25, 1867. Written in 27 working days exactly. 
Revised in 2. ' ' The story was founded on the old ' ' Tragedy 
of Hairston," which had appeared in Putnam's Monthly in 
1856, and was composed with facility. Cooke sold it to 
Slater for $1300, reserving the right to print it as a book 
after five years. The magazine rights were later disposed 
of by the Home Journal to the Philadelphia Saturday 
Night, but Monksden never appeared as a volume. 

Still another work intervened between Hammer and Ra- 
pier and the "sequel to Surry." Before the completion of 
Monksden, Cooke had been asked by W. J. McClellan to 
write a novelette for his Southern Society, another Balti- 
more periodical. Though somewhat fatigued from the work 
on Monksden, he wrote Hilt to Hilt between August 8 and 
September 11, 1867. This he thought was very slow compo- 
sition. "Jaded by work, however, and the hot weather, I 
could not go to it con amore." For the manuscript Cooke 
asked and received $500. Carleton wished to buy the story 
from Cooke, but the Baltimore editor naturally refused 



104 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

permission, and sold it himself to Carleton, who paid Cooke 
for revising and enlarging it. 

Hilt to Hilt appeared as a book in 1869. The scene is laid 
on the banks of the Shenandoah River between "Winchester 
and the Blue Ridge. This territory was part of "Mosby's 
Confederacy," a name applied to the portion of Virginia 
north of the Rappahannock and along the lower Shenan- 
doah, a region which throughout the war was a no-man's- 
land. The fictitious Surry is on a "tour of duty" from 
Lee's army to Early's and takes part in the incidents which 
he works up in 1868 into an "episodical memoir." The 
book lacks the large figures of history, the battles, the 
sweep, but it has essentially the plot of Surry. The two 
Arden brothers are fighting on opposite sides. Ellen Adair 
is, by the machinations of the jealous villain, Ratcliffe, 
estranged from her lover, Landon. The strain of foreign 
blood, Basque this time, is found in Antoinette Duvarnay. 
The villains are at length overcome and a happy outcome is 
provided for such of the virtuous as are not gloriously dead. 
Hilt to Hilt is notable in that it deals with Cooke's home 
community. Annie Meadows is courted and won by the 
Confederate Arden at "The Briars," later Cooke's home. 
' ' Pagebrook, " the seat of the father of his future wife, is 
called by name. The village of Millwood and the town of 
Winchester are apostrophized. In his prologue Cooke in- 
corporates some adverse Boston criticism. "I had supposed 
the ms. of Surry of Eagle' 's-N est to have been composed 
in a most compact, terse, and altogether faultless style; 
and here was a great critic, and a critic in Boston, which 
was worse still, declaring that I was florid and exaggerated ! 
What to do? ... I could only resolve that, in future, 
I would never be florid or exaggerated any more." He 
asserts the substantial truthfulness to actuality of the inci- 
dents in Hilt to Hilt, remarks that from fear of being called 



THE CIVIL WAR 105 

a "sensation-writer" he leaves out some of the more excit- 
ing details ; states, in fine, that he is aiming to ' ' tell a plain 
and unadorned story." It is nevertheless difficult to see 
how he can have been serious in this pretension, for in 
incident and in style Hilt to Hilt is as melodramatic as can 
well be imagined. What else could be said of this selection? 

" 'Let me finish. For the last three days his infatuation has 
become a species of madness. He has repulsed, insulted, spurned, 
put his heel upon me! I am no longer anything but the wretched 
slave of his caprice! He has made nothing of telling me that I 
am disgusting in his eyes. He has dared to use a term in addressing 
me that I will not repeat! Yes, this man, to whom I have sacri- 
ficed everything, — for whom I have lost name and fame, and all 
that a woman values, — this base, cowardly wretch, who has lied and 
tricked and betrayed others for so long, has now insulted, outraged, 
and betrayed me. 

"'He has betrayed me,' continued the speaker with flaming eyes; 
'but woe to him! He has not counted on the Basque blood of the 
Duvarnays! I have but one aim, — to crush him! And now, per- 
haps, you understand why I have come hither, Captain Landon. 
I come to say, you have only to follow me to surprise and destroy 
the bitterest enemy you have in the world! I will lead you straight 
to him; will deliver him into your hands, asking one thing only — 
that you will allow me to be present when you bury your sword in 
his cowardly heart ! '" ' 

Mohun; or The Last Days of Lee and His Paladins, the 
sequel to Surry of Eagle 's-Nest, was begun in January and 
was finished about the middle of April, 1868. "It took 
three months of solid work," said the author. "I worked 
harder on this than on any book I have ever written ; and 
I think it more compact, and durable." Mohun was ac- 
cepted by F. J. Huntington and was published promptly. 
It requires no detailed comment for its merits and de- 
fects are those of Surry. Personal anecdotes, history, and 
terroristic fiction are again offered in combination. The 
titular hero is a Confederate general who believes himself to 



106 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

be a married man and a murderer, but finds at the ap- 
pointed time that he is neither. The beautiful evil woman, 
the hidden identity, the love of the same woman, and other 
of Cooke's relished characters and devices are here re- 
peated. The leading villain is known first as Darke, then as 
Mortimer, and finally as Davenant. Some expert spies, an 
attempted poisoning, a negro sorceress, numerous melodra- 
matic adventures — all these are made use of and the 
expected quota of love affairs is not omitted. Some of the 
characters of Surry reappear. The plot further involves 
ante-bellum trials and family altercations, and is very com- 
plex — to outline it here is unnecessary. The greatest 
value of the work lies in its depiction of the dogged deter- 
mination of the lessening band of "Lee's Miserables" 1 as 
they faced defeat, and in the admirable representation of 
the civilian classes in Richmond: the colonel awaiting a 
brigadiership before beginning to fight, the food speculators 
and others laying the financial foundations for a newer 
degraded aristocracy while the finest sons of the Old Do- 
minion were sacrificing their lives as well as their wealth. 
It was a pity to waste the seed-corn of the race, thought 
Cooke and the best Virginians, but why should it be saved 
if there would be no sacred Southern soil where it might 
flourish ? The style of the book is facile and not uniform in 
texture. It sometimes has a tinge of the yellow-back; but 
in places, as in the invocation to the field of Gettysburg, 
exhibits an ornate splendor. To one who reads Cooke's 
works- in their chronological order, a large portion of the 
military matter is now familiar, and the lack of variety in 
expression begins to pall. Again and again are found such 
phrases as ' ' hilt to hilt ' ' and ' ' hammer and rapier, ' ' to cite 

i Many of Lee's men applied to themselves the humorously mis- 
pronounced title of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, a novel which, 
according to Cooke, was very popular among the Confederate soldiers. 



THE CIVIL WAR 107 

only those figures which give names to books. Once or 
twice Cooke forgot his role of historian and spoke out in 
the present. He meant it from his heart when he inserted 
an appeal to the states carved from the territory ceded by 
Virginia to the federal government : ' ' In February, 1868, 
when these lines are written, black hands have got Virginia 
by the throat, and she is suffocating — Messieurs of the great 
Northwest, she gave you being, and suckled you ! Are you 
going to see her strangled before your very eyes ? ' ' 

As early as 1866 Cooke had given thought to writing a 
life of Robert E. Lee. A letter to the general elicited a 
reply which he did not consider enthusiastic, so he aban- 
doned the project. Lee's letter, however, as Cooke later 
concluded, indicated no more objection than would have 
been voiced by any modest man. At all events, immediately 
upon the death of the great soldier on October 12, 1870, 
D. Appleton and Company offered Cooke $1500 for a biog- 
raphy, and he accepted the commission. Before the end of 
October he had begun to write, and finished his task in 
forty-five working days. He mailed the last of the manu- 
script on January 19, 1871, the significance of the date as 
Lee's birthday apparently not occurring to him, for he did 
not record it in his diary. 

The Life of General Robert E. Lee is, in its portraits, 
illustrations, and maps, and its type and binding, a fitting 
companion to the Stonewall Jackson. In method and style 
the two biographies are so nearly identical that the second 
calls for no extended comment. It is a narrative of Lee's 
campaigns in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania — 
almost no attention whatever is paid to the years before 
1861 or after 1865. For battles and other national events 
one can have recourse to a history; a biography should re- 
veal at least a few personal idiosyncrasies. There is always 
great curiosity over the youth and the old age of a genius 



108 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

or a hero, and Lee was both. In Cooke's Life the great gen- 
eral is, at the close of five hundred pages, still but a distant 
figure passing on horseback. The military leader may have 
been revealed ; the man is largely unknown. In such matters 
as he does admit, Cooke distributes emphasis rather poorly. 
Lee's four years at West Point are dismissed in a line, while 
a chapter is devoted to his visit to the death-bed of the 
Episcopalian bishop, William Meade. It must be borne in 
mind, however, that Cooke produced this book rapidly to 
meet a sudden popular demand, and made use of only such 
facts as he knew or could discover easily. He thoroughly 
realized the limitations of the work. For instance, he did 
not dwell upon General Lee's presidency of Washington 
College, but deliberately left the subject "to a more im- 
portant authority." 

On his experiences in the Civil War, Cooke based seven 
books, of which Lee was the last. In producing these works 
his immediate surroundings were happy, but his outlook 
was depressing. He saw his beloved Virginia in the toils of 
a mismanaged reconstruction, the prey of the blacks; and 
he thought he detected an approaching schism between the 
different classes of whites. He refers frequently to writing 
his fiction as a relief from the world about him — a circum- 
stance which may account in part for his search for the 
bizarre. The true tragedy of this period of his life was, 
however, neither the fall of the Confederacy nor the humil- 
iation attendant upon Reconstruction. It seems almost a 
loss to the world that the young captain of artillery, an 
already famous novelist, should have written his biogra- 
phies without regard to style or sufficient data, and above 
all should have vitiated notes of the utmost value by blend- 
ing with them an outworn strain of fiction. What an 
opportunity he lost! How famous he might have become 
as the only writer of note who served from First Manassas 



THE CIVIL WAR 109 

to Appomattox and set down with accuracy and brilliancy 
the little as well as the large aspects of the great struggle ! 
Such a work — alas unwritten ! — would have been a classic 
for the twentieth century. 

The reason for Cooke's apparent failure to make the most 
of his material is suggested by a conversation in which he 
outlined to Eggleston his attitude toward war : 

" 'I wasn't born to be a soldier,' he said ... in after years. 'Of 
course I can stand bullets and shells and all that, without flinching, 
just as any man must if he has any manhood in him, and as for 
hardships and starvation, why, a man who has self-control can 
endure them when duty demands it, but I never liked the business 
of war. Gold lace on my coat always made me feel as if I were a 
child tricked out in red and yellow calico with turkey-feathers in 
my headgear to add to the gorgeousness. There is nothing intel- 
lectual about fighting. It is fit work for brutes and brutish men. 
And in modern war, where men are organized in masses and con- 
verted into insensate machines, there is really nothing heroic or 
romantic or in any way calculated to appeal to the imagination ! ' " 



Cooke, in fine, was never at heart a soldier. He was a 
humanitarian, a sentimentalist, a romancer, and a demo- 
crat. It was only natural that such a man should have 
idealized his Civil War stories, even at a loss of the flavor 
of reality. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION— WRITER AND 
FARMER 

John Esten Cooke was married on September 18, 1867, 
to Miss Mary Francis Page, daughter of Dr. Robert Page 
of "Saratoga," Clarke County, Virginia. The ceremony 
was performed by the Reverend Joseph Jones in Christ 
(Episcopal) Church at Millwood. Cooke had known Miss 
Page for a number of years. In his diary kept in the fifties 
he had mentioned her casually as a fellow-guest at a moun- 
tain summer-resort. Moreover, in a contemporaneous news- 
paper account of an ante-bellum tournament he had praised 
her most highly. A deep or permanent interest in Miss 
Page cannot, however, be inferred from this slight evi- 
dence ; for she had been crowned queen of love and beauty, 
and the tribute to her — while more glowing than that 
bestowed on her maids of honor — was no greater than 
custom demanded upon such an occasion. The possibility 
that Cooke may have had personal interest back of his 
praise of the youthful "queen," or that she admired him, 
is, nevertheless, suggested by a rather unusual document 
of about the same period. Sallie Goodrich, one of Miss 
Page's schoolmates, was required to write a composition in 
French, and chose as the subject of the neatly written yet 
somewhat ungrammatical paper an account of the supposed 
marriage of Miss Page to the young novelist, John Esten 
Cooke. This incident happened ten years before the Cooke- 
Page wedding, and cannot be regarded as of very serious 

110 



THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 111 

import, for during the war the author-soldier was fancy- 
free, and after the war his love for Miss Page appears to 
have been altogether as new as it was deep and whole- 
hearted. He refers to her as the anchor which held him to 
Virginia when, in the disappointment of defeat, he had 
determined on leaving the state and nation. A glimpse of 
the zealous lover may be had from the article "I Go To 
See John Esten Cooke" which G. W. Bagby wrote and pub- 
lished in his Orange Native Virginian. Cooke's diary, in- 
deed, reveals the fact that he frequently visited "Sara- 
toga, ' ' and Bagby good-naturedly states that even the guest 
was neglected by the novelist who hurried away on horse- 
back to keep a previous engagement with his lady. 

Cooke not only married a charming woman, but he mar- 
ried into a family as notable as his own. Perhaps for the 
very reason that his social standing was unquestioned and 
soundly based, he was never a snob. He was a typical rep- 
resentative of the saner democratic element in the mid- 
nineteenth century aristocracy of Virginia. An illustration 
of his family's attitude toward snobbery may be found in 
Cooke 's reaction to a society flurry in Richmond during the 
war. A volunteer committee had spent time and money in 
preparing to stage an elaborate tableau performance for 
war relief. Cooke's sister Mary, Mrs. Steger, wrote him 

about it: "The Misses , and one or two other 

fashionable young ladies, who had promised to take part in 
the performance, have declined ; they gave as their excuse, 

they heard the were not fashionable." 

Mrs. Steger explained that the family — with whose repre- 
sentative the ladies of fashion would not appear on the stage 
— was thoroughly estimable, and begged her brother to come 
if possible and help save the occasion. The sum total of 
such unsocial acts on the part of a set of small-brained girls 
was, as Cooke sorrowfully knew, of indirect aid to the 



112 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

Federal soldiers in precipitating the fall of the Confeder- 
acy. Such types he held in contempt and flayed them in 
Mohun along with the profiteer and the colonel who was 
waiting to be made a general before drawing his sword. 
Just as Cooke never made ignoble use of his distinguished 
birth, he never failed, on the other hand, to feel in it a 
restrained pride. He was pleased that his sister Sal, Mrs. 
Duval, was " regarded as the first person in New Kent. 
Somehow we stand high wherever we go. It is singular, 
isn't it?" He was fond of recalling George Cary Eggle- 
ston's "joke": "Somebody asked somebody else who [sic} 
J. Esten Cooke married. The reply was Miss Page — a big 
connection — he had married into all the good families he 
didn't belong to himself." 

Cooke's wedding was followed by a "tour" which ex- 
tended "East and North" as far as Quebec and Niagara 
Falls. Upon his return to Virginia he settled with his 
bride at her father's home, where he continued his profes- 
sion of writing. The stay at "Saratoga" was altogether 
pleasant. The novelist relieved the routine of composition 
by occasional work in the garden. He often went fishing, 
and caught, he records, as many as twenty fish on one trip. 
He "bathed in the run under the willow," used "Pride of 
Virginia" tobacco, and would sit "under the lindens smok- 
ing" as he watched the "magnificent moon rise over the 
mountains." There is no indication that even a shadow of 
disagreement ever passed between him and the Pages, and 
he looked forward with grief to the necessity of leaving a 
home made doubly dear by the genial comradeship of his 
wife's family and the memories of his own early married 
days. But Cooke was a man of position, and all the habits 
of society pointed to the appropriateness of his being estab- 
lished in a house of his own. The place selected for his 
residence was a Page estate known as "The Briars." 



THE PROBLEMS OP RECONSTRUCTION 113 

Thither Cooke often journeyed to superintend improve- 
ments, and on September 12, 1869, he moved to "The 
Briars," which became his home for the rest of his life. 

To John Esten Cooke and Mary Francis Page there 
were born three children. Before the removal from "Sara- 
toga" an only daughter, Susan Randolph, had been born. 
"Yesterday morning [i. e., on July 11, 1868] about six 
o'clock Mary's daughter was born — a fine healthy child. . . . 
Mary is astonishingly well and gay — it is difficult to under- 
stand that she is unwell." The diary recalls many of 
Susie's baby antics, the father noting, for instance, that 
she wept when the water touched her in the christening 
ceremony. Cooke likewise records the birth of Edmund 
Pendleton, his first son: "This morning [May 23, 1870] at 
a quarter before eight o'clock Mary gave birth to what 
Cousin Lucy Mann says is a 'fine boy.' This is written a 
few minutes afterwards. A lovely morning. " Cooke's last 
child was born in 1874: "At about 3 in the morning, 
October 12, was born our third child, a fine boy who is to 
be called Robert Powel Page in full after Dr. P. and Powel. 
Mary and the baby are quite well." 

Cooke thus, in a home of his own and surrounded by 
his family, began to carry forward his career as a writer 
under conditions which were not only dear to his heart but 
had long been cherished as ideal before there was any 
promise of their fulfilment. On the last day of the year 
1848 he had written to his brother Philip : "You don't know 
what a happy life you lead, no work — writing tales is not 
work, more fun than anything else — a sweet wife, fine chil- 
dren and nothing to do but amuse yourself." Although 
Cooke directed, perhaps in the mood of a moment, that his 
pre-war diary be destroyed, he declared on the contrary in 
his new one that he was writing it for his children when 
they should grow up. The pages abound in such entries as 



114 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

the following : ' ' God bless my dear one and my little one : 
I wonder if anybody will laugh at that if they poach on my 
diary!" The entries normally close with the letters "D. 
N. B.," a hurried abbreviation of "Dieu nous benisse," the 
sincere prayer of the husband and father. 

At ''The Briars" Cooke became, for the first time in his 
life, a gardener and farmer. He was an adept in the 
seed-catalogue nomenclature of his day, strove for a large 
variety of vegetables for his kitchen-garden, and experi- 
enced an amateur's satisfaction in producing a certain vege- 
table before any of the neighbors. He gave individuality 
to his labors and expressed his fatherly pride by planting 
lettuce seed in such a way that, upon coming up, they 
would spell the name SUSIE. "Politics, and city and 
public life seem to me the merest farces. Literature and 
gardening are the really philosophic pursuits of life." 
Cooke complained that gardening even disputed with writ- 
ing the command of his major interest. In an opposite 
mood, he went so far as to revolve in his mind the idea of 
selling his produce in the Baltimore and Alexandria mar- 
kets; but wisely concluded that he lacked the "energy, in- 
dustry and system requisite for success in any such under- 
taking." He was also ambitious of becoming a fruit and 
grape grower. By experiments on his large farm he 
reached conclusions about the relative efficacy of manure 
and artificial fertilizer as crop producers. On the whole, 
however, he showed a lack of adaptability to his new envi- 
ronment. For many years he was a victim of the mistakes 
common to the inexperienced manager or to those who 
regard farming as an unskilled calling. To persons who 
have seen the havoc one storm may produce, or who know 
something of animal diseases and animal enemies, a few 
sentences like the following are enough to reveal Cooke as, 
at best, a ' ' book-farmer " : " Putting out sheep is an excel- 



THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 115 

lent business. It is not difficult to make 100 per cent on 
the investment without chance of loss, and difficult to make 
less than fifty!" 

Cooke's profits from writing fortunately prevented his 
farming ventures from shipwrecking him ; and he was en- 
abled from the start to go forward with his plans for 
beautifying his house and grounds. "By care and indus- 
try, with a little time," he wrote, " 'The Briars' may be 
made a neat, attractive and happy-looking home." In his 
improvements the author was not only the landscape artist, 
but did most of the work. He planted new shrubs and 
flowers, pruned trees, kept in repair the wall around the 
lawn, and with his own hands built rustic outdoor seats. 

In his attractive home Cooke, hospitable by taste and 
heredity, was from the start a lavish entertainer. Day 
after day the names of numerous guests are recorded in 
his diary. Unfortunately, he thought it part of the code of 
a gentleman never to work while visitors were beneath his 
roof. He often regretted their curtailment of his working 
hours, but never complained. In reality he enjoyed every 
minute of their stay and seemed at heart to welcome the 
excuse for putting aside his pen. _Still, one is suspicious of 
a shade of irony when he recalls that forty-five visitors had 
slept at "The Briars" during his first year there, some of 
them for weeks. " 'The Briars' seems to have been effec- 
tually ' warmed ' since our arrival ! ' ' But when all has been 
said, Cooke was almost if not quite as much of a visitor 
as an entertainer. He dined abroad often, sometimes day 
after day, at "The Glen," "Pagebrook," and a dozen 
other fancifully named old family seats, paid an annual 
visit of several weeks to "Saratoga," and long occasional 
visits to "Cassilis," "The Farm," and elsewhere. He at- 
tended numerous parties and sometimes gave one, as he 
records on September 10, 1870: "Last night we had some- 



116 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

thing like a regular party — about 60 in all — danced to two 
fiddles in the old kitchen, and had a very handsome supper 
table ... a young party ... an agreeable evening — 
or rather night — broke up at 3 o'clock." As well as to 
neighborhood guests Cooke was ambitious of extending the 
hospitality of "The Briars" to contemporary writers and 
publishers. Among his preserved papers are perhaps a 
dozen letters thanking him for invitations, and assuring him 
of acceptance should anything ever enable the writer to 
visit the neighborhood. Some of these invitations went to 
persons whom the hospitable Southerner knew but slightly ; 
yet an acceptance was not altogether unusual. George Cary 
Eggleston, fellow Confederate veteran, author, and editor 
of Hearth and Home, was a pleased guest who often wrote 
of Cooke's novels or of the interesting Virginian himself. 
In a brief sketch entitled "About the Briars," Eggleston 
gives an entertaining account of Cooke's home. "Strangest 
of all is the name of the hospitable mansion in which these 
words are written. It stands on a grassy knoll in the midst 
of the dream-like beauty of the Shenandoah Valley. As one 
looks out from its wide-open portal, the Blue Ridge on the 
one hand, the Alleghanies on the other, with the 'Three 
Sisters' in front, inclose a very fairy -land of peaceful love- 
liness, whose people — all akin to each other, of course — 
are just such delightful neighbors as one would want to live 
among forever. The place itself is a fit center to the land- 
scape, and its master and mistress are a part of the place. 
The mansion, with its surrounding acres, is called 'The 
Briars,' despite the peacefulness of its ways and the won- 
derful pleasantness of all its paths. Its name is a misnomer, 
of course, and yet we would not have it changed on any 
terms. The contrast between the homestead 's thorny name 
and the thornless character of its life is a constant delight. 
Its master is a writer of books which everybody loves to 



THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 117 

read. He has a delightful habit of seeing the better side of 
everything, and reflecting something of his own geniality 
upon all the men and things with which he comes in con- 
tact. He thinks well of the world, and when he talks or 
writes of its people they really seem better even than they 
think themselves. He is in the garden at this moment gath- 
ering tomatoes and cucumbers for dinner, and they are 
sure to come to the house looking the better for their 
passing through his hands. Briars couldn't grow under 
his eyes if they would. As he looked at them they would 
certainly shed their thorns and put forth flowers instead." 
Among numerous praises of autumn scenes Cooke found 
occasion to set down an approval of his home as it appeared 
in spring: "Everything around 'The Briars' is now green 
and flourishing and beautiful — the grass plot like emerald, 
but starred with dandelions, the ashes putting forth their 
light tender green, the redbuds in full blossom, the wheat 
fields of deep rich green and lovely when the sun is on them 
— all bright and cheerful." So much for the physical side. 
The novelist's life at "The Briars" had, however, a somber 
aspect which grew partly out of his inability as a manager 
and partly out of a naturally slow adaptability to the new 
issues of life in the Reconstruction period. 

Cooke, as has been hinted, experienced his share of the 
post-bellum gloom natural to an ex-Confederate officer. He 
saw a civilization in ruins and amid the ruins could see at 
first no quick seeds of hope which he felt might later 
develop along lines he would think desirable. The intel- 
lectual class in the South was especially hard hit by the 
result of the war. While the farmer for the most part still 
owned his land or portions of it, the writer — in many cases 
before the war already accustomed to live up to or beyond 
his earning power — found his familiar periodicals defunct 
or impoverished and his reading public generally too poor 



118 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

to buy books. Authors may also have well felt a certain 
chagrin upon realizing that the war's inevitability had been 
partly due to their attitude. The ante-bellum Southern 
writer had not yet learned that books like Uncle Tom's 
Cabin, irrespective of their accuracy, could not be treated 
with contempt, but demanded a forceful reasoned answer 
before the tribunal of an interested world. Southern men 
of letters had offered little or no help to the Southern pub- 
licists in solving the problems of the day. Some writers, 
indeed, upheld slavery, but in terms too exaggerated to 
excite respect. Others, like Cooke — who, if not actually 
opposed to slavery, was at least indifferent to its continu- 
ance — seemed to seek, consciously or unconsciously, in an 
idealized past a refuge from the fermenting world about 
them. After the war many of these writers realized keenly 
their mistake. Physically the South was prostrate : it was 
a duty to change tactics and defend her honor. The 
struggle of arms was over, but upon the Southern writer 
lay the solemn obligation of upholding before posterity the 
ideals of the Confederacy. Expressions of this view were 
numerous, and a self-dedication to this purpose was often 
Urged upon Cooke by Beauregard, P. M. B. Young, and 
others. To thinking people Southern writers have justified 
the Southern attitude, but much of the work has been 
done by authors who have begun their careers since 1865. 
The impoverished professional writer of the old regime, 
as William Gilmore Simms declared in a review of one of 
Cooke's novels, was unfortunately not always wholly free 
in the late sixties to write what he wished. He had of 
necessity to write whatever would bring the most money 
quickly. Timrod's despair, Hayne's relative poverty, and 
Lanier's noble struggle are familiar to all students of 
American literature. Cooke presents a somewhat different 
case financially, for he produced a better-paying type of 



THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 119 

composition, was unmarried in the worst years, and fur- 
thermore acquired by marrying Miss Page a valuable farm. 
While he thus had no struggle with actual want, he was 
nevertheless in a position to see Reconstruction not only 
from the point of view of the Southern apologist, but 
from that of the actual rebuilder of the South 's material 
prosperity — the farmer, confronted with market and labor 
problems. 

Between the close of the war and March, 1873, Cooke 
had earned thirteen thousand dollars from his writings, 
but in spite of this income and his fertile farm, he was at 
the end of the latter year still in debt. The amount owed 
was only one hundred dollars, and of course reflected not 
hardship but careless spending, as the following record 
shows: "... great event of the parlour carpet. It was 
bought early in November [1869] with a part — $50 or 
so — of $300 I got from English for the Heir of Oaymount. 
The rug has swans on it x — coincidence ; as a swan is one 
of the chief characters in the heir! . . . the parlour with 
all its red is quite cheerful ..." How Cooke could 
enjoy a rug purchased at the price of remaining in debt 
seems a mystery to one familiar with his valiant struggle 
with his father's obligations in the fifties; but the debt 
was nominal and the record of it may have actually been 
prompted by a pride in financial integrity. 

Fluctuating grain prices, occasioned by undeterminable 
or far-off causes like the Franco-Prussian War, were a 
source of great annoyance to the farmer-author, who chafed 
at the gamble whereby he might pay high prices for fertil- 
izer and seed and encounter a calamitous fall in the price 
of wheat before harvesting his crop. He worried also over 
the numerous excessively bad crop years in the sixties and 

1 "Susie feeds them with crumbs in a way charming to behold." 
(Footnote to the entry in the diary.) 



120 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

seventies; but the great problem was labor. Except for 
occasional tasks, Cooke did not rely on negro workmen. 
This was perhaps because of the relative scarcity of negroes 
in the Valley county of Clarke, for he seems never to have 
had a grudge against any member of that race. Both his 
mammy and his wife's mammy lived with him, and 
Sawney, sold before the war as an incorrigible, was often 
back now to regale the children with his amusing yarns. 
Cooke corresponded with an immigrant employment bureau 
in New York in the hope of securing a foreign farm-hand, 
but soon decided to rent. Rent he did to a succession of 
tenants, but never with satisfactory results. One was too 
slow, one was too delicate, one was a fair talker but a poor 
performer: thus went the unfortunate series. He won- 
dered why he never got a desirable tenant, the true answer 
of course being that, with the decline of so many land- 
holding families, an industrious farm laborer or renter 
could with relative ease better his position and pass into 
the proprietor class. Cooke's early post-war gloom over 
Virginia 's social and economic future was soon, by this very 
condition, changed to complacency, for he observed in 
1882 that the new white landholders sympathized with the 
problems of the older aristocracy. This racial solidarity of 
the whites under the tutelage of ex-Confederate leaders 
rescued Virginia from Reconstruction and, as elsewhere in 
the South, put into power a political regime that has not 
yet been seriously disturbed. 

For several years following the Civil War, Cooke was 
silently antagonistic to the Federal government. He re- 
sented his District Number One taxes. "Hurrah, we are 
as good as the f reedmen ! " he wrote of the amnesty procla- 
mation which restored the voting right to ex-Confederate 
soldiers. On July 4, 1870, he wrote: "Grand humbug of 
'celebrations'! — in which the South, having no inde- 



THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 121 

pendence to celebrate, takes no part! Singular how com- 
pletely we rebellious ones have come to despise the United 
States, their flag, and all concerning them." In the early 
se» ..cies Cooke frequently exchanged letters with the 
French critic, A. de Pontmartin, and compared the condi- 
tion of the South with that of France. A decade, however, 
sufficed for the effacement of every trace of hostility. No 
unpleasantness resulted from his thoughts or his asso- 
ciations on his northern trip in 1876. On this journey he 
paid a two-day visit to the Centennial Exposition, spent 
several days in the homes of G. W. Carleton and G. C. 
Eggleston, and called upon 0. B. Bunce, J. W. Harper, 
and Henry Mills Alden. 

In the eight years from 1870 until the death of his wife 
Cooke produced a half-score of books which, in their setting 
and time, varied from the seventeenth century England of 
Her Majesty the Queen to the contemporary America of 
Pretty Mrs. Gaston. The novels of this decade are more 
nearly forgotten than those of any other period of Cooke's 
activity, but while they are not notable they do not deserve 
aggressive condemnation. They are in many cases good of 
their kind, and doubtless gave satisfaction to such of their 
readers as did not peruse them with too critical an eye. 

Among these novels there is one, not the best of the lot, 
considered as literature, which stands out as of the highest 
interest. The Heir of Gaymount contains an almost com- 
plete record of Cooke's response to his environment in the 
years immediately following the war. There were in the 
South thousands of farmers but few professional writers. 
Perhaps because he belonged to each class, Cooke tried to 
give through literature an admonitory message to the 
farmer. While working on the book, he called it "Truck." 
His ideas in regard to farming and other Reconstruction 
problems are fastened upon a conventional plot, 



122 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

Edmund Carteret, formerly lieutenant in the Confed- 
erate States army, finds himself the heir of "Gaymount," 
an old family seat in Virginia on the South bank of th" 
Potomac River. Along with the mansion-house, howwer, 
Carteret receives but forty acres of land. The late owner, 
an uncle of Federal sympathies, has been angered at Ed- 
mund's service to the Confederacy, and has left him only 
what he felt to be inherently due him as the bearer of the 
family name. The bulk of the property has been left to 
another nephew, Arthur Botleigh. Edmund not only has 
never worked, but he is penniless ; he sits amid his decaying 
possessions and mopes. Shall he join Maximilian's army 
in Mexico, or shall he buy more land and undertake farm- 
ing? In either case money is needed. Meanwhile he has 
remained closely at home, has not read a newspaper, and is 
consequently caught in a tax snare. He did not turn in by 
the prescribed time a list of his property, and has to accept 
the appraiser's assessment, which is ten times a reasonable 
value. To meet this tax he contemplates selling the family 
plate but is prevented from doing so by the opportune 
arrival of Frank Lance of the New York Bird of Freedom 
who pays for a horse furnished him during the war. Car- 
teret admits to Lance that he has been contemplating 
writing a book. Lance advises him: "Abandon your grand 
ideas of writing a big volume or volumes, and write some 
sketches. ... I have found out that to do one small 
thing is better than resolving only to do five hundred big 
things. . . . Come down to small things, above all, to work. 
Do that and you shall be great, glorious, and happy." 
Edmund of course has a sweetheart and an enemy in the 
neighborhood. The enemy is one Tugmuddle, an overseer, 
who ruined Carteret's father and, determined now to 
become owner of "Gaymount," is constantly urging Ed- 
mund to accept a loan. Major Vawter, father of Carteret's 



THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 123 

sweetheart, Annie, owes eight thousand dollars to Tug- 
muddle and is infuriated when the socially ambitious rascal 
offers to cancel the debt if Annie will marry his son. For 
Annie's sake Carteret gives a deed for eight thousand dol- 
lars on "Gaymount," and relieves the Vawters. He is 
thus rather seriously embarrassed but happens to read a 
torn newspaper containing an account of a gentleman who 
purchased forty acres of poor land in New Jersey and got 
rich on it by trucking. Carteret thereupon determines to 
raise vegetables and fruits. He enlists for his trucking 
crusade Rautzahn, a German gardener, and Guy Hartrig- 
ger, a member of his old company who has never left him. 
The events so far chronicled take place in the autumn of 
1865, whereafter the curtain is lowered for three years. 
"When it is raised Carteret is presented as having actually 
cleared over eight thousand dollars from his forty acres. 
But the money is now due to Tugmuddle, and the failure 
of a bank dissipates six thousand of it. Frank Lance comes 
on another visit. He reports that Carteret's sketches, col- 
lected as "The Greys and the Blues" have had a sale of 
over half a million copies. This, unfortunately, helps little, 
for Lance, not suspecting such success, has sold the work 
outright for a thousand dollars. The jolly reporter is, 
however, a needed visitor, for worry is hanging rather 
heavily over Edmund much to the grief of Annie, now his 
wife. The "heir" is wrought up over an effort to solve 
some enigmatic abbreviations found, in the handwriting of 
his uncle, on a piece of paper which a pet swan has pulled 
out from a crack in an article of furniture. Carteret finally 
solves the cryptogram, digs at the designated hour and 
place, and discovers a chest loaded with money and jewels 
and containing a later will of his uncle deeding him all the 
property. This will completely undoes Tugmuddle who has 
loaned over thirty thousand dollars to the now dead Bot- 



124 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

leigh. The plot is concluded with the marriage of Lance to 
Annie's sister, and with Hartrigger's marriage to Rose 
Lacy, a young Irish widow about whom he has often been 
good-naturedly teased by Edmund. 

An outline of this commonplace plot fails to reveal the 
true character of The Heir of Gaymount, and does not ex- 
plain its importance to a person interested in Cooke or in 
contemporary attempts at solving the problems of Recon- 
struction. In the first place Carteret is plainly Cooke. The 
author and his created hero are identical in the divided alle- 
giance of their families, their service as Confederate com- 
pany officers, their desire upon first thought to leave their 
humbled native state, and their marrying a young woman 
of the neighborhood. Carteret also writes ; the sketches of 
"The Greys and the Blues," recall of course Hammer and 
Rapier and, in particular, Wearing of the Gray. The com- 
ing of the New York writer, the intense interest in garden- 
ing, and the worry over District Number One taxes are 
further parallels. Lance called Carteret's baby "Little 
Miss Rat," "Lambpig," "Mrs. Smallweed," and a number 
of other epithets which Cooke bestowed playfully on his 
own baby daughter. 

More important even than this reflection of the author is 
the book's preaching of the doctrine of work as a remedy 
for the South 's troubles. Cooke not only saw certain old 
families face facts and maintain their status, but he 
witnessed sadly the decline of others through lack of 
industry and initiative. His book might be taken as, in 
part, an appeal to the latter type of Virginian. The hero 
was "one of a class more numerous than the world 
supposes . . . the class of idlers with the capacity to 
perform hard work, if they can only get a clear idea of 
how to begin. " " Begin with what you have, ' ' summarizes 
Cooke's admonition given in the widely quoted poem "My 



THE PROBLEMS OP RECONSTRUCTION 125 

Acre," and in the volume under consideration. " 'I have 
been an idler up to this time,' said the young man; 'I am 
going to try to become industrious, and I hope well to do. 
I have been living in cloudland, and I mean to come down 
to solid ground. I have been planning and scheming, and 
dreaming how I could buy land, and make money culti- 
vating it. . . . What I mean to do now is, to give up all 
such fancies of adding to my estate, to cultivate what I 
have, and to make this tract of forty acres bring me as 
much as four hundred or a thousand.' " The advice was 
excellent and was much needed in the South, but Cooke's 
application of it to the persons of the story results in a 
financial success so extraordinary as to be almost absurd. 
Making no allowances for possible loss, he almost literally 
counts an earned coin for each seed sown. The inadap- 
tability of a particular crop to a particular soil and the 
glutting of markets have no terrors for the fortunate heir 
of "Gaymount." Cooke urges Virginia as a superb place 
for grape culture, describes the cabbage as a "noble vege- 
table," and even goes so far as to present a summarizing 
balance-sheet of the truck-farmer 's transactions : 

"2 acres of late cabbages, in ground from which chevril roots 
were taken in July:— 8,400 cabbages . . . $672.00." 

Thus are itemized tomatoes, peas, melons, cucumbers, 
horse-radish, and other vegetables. 

Although the chief function of The Heir of Gaymount 
was to deliver an exhortation to the author's contempora- 
ries, the book has certain other aspects of minor interest. 
It presents a quiet defence of the old Southern order. 
Carteret says of the pride of birth : 

"The culprit before you was born in Virginia — he naturally loves 
it therefore, and perhaps some of its faults even. Had he a grand- 
father? It is probable; most people have. And he pleads guilty 
to possessing some old pictures, a little old silver, and even a torn 



126 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

family tree! Is he 'one of the wicked' for that reason? Heaven 
forbid! He is not responsible. These objects were here when he 
came; they will be here when he is gone, he hopes, and his affection 
for them is the result of habit, and not intended to offend anybody. 
Doubtless, elsewhere in the world there are many houses, with pic- 
tures and silver and family trees in them. If their owners derive 
innocent satisfaction from their possession, why should I think hard 
of it or they of me?" 

Cooke, lifelong exponent of kindness, quieted and milked 
"the Rose heifer" when she would stand for no one else. 
Carteret says here of the wounded swan which he took 
home as a pet, "Yes; but remember the swan found it. I 
confess I think of that often, Lance. ... I think the fact 
teaches the value of kindness in this world." In its love- 
episodes the book is typical of its author. The usual con- 
trast is afforded by the somewhat burlesquely handled 
affair between Guy and Mrs. Lacy, and the tender affection 
of the protagonists. Annie, however, is not the usual help- 
less heroine ; she is represented as being the mainstay of the 
Vawter home. 

Cooke devoted much thought and work to the unique 
Heir of Gaymount. Though absorbed at first by his task, 
he soon found the composition attended with "unexpected 
difficulty." He had the subject in mind by January 6, 
1868, began writing on August 18, but did not finish until 
January 25, 1869. "Never did one small book undergo 
such alterations, cuttings down, remoulding, and remaking 
generally." Cooke did not readily find a publisher for his 
manuscript. He "offered it to Appleton's Journal, H. and 
Home, Harpers, before English accepted it for the Old 
Guard." 

The monthly Old Guard and the weekly New York Day- 
Book were published by Van Evrie, Horton and Co., a 
publishing firm devoted to an aggressive anti-black cam- 



THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 127 

paign, as will be shown by some quotations from the 
announcements on the paper covers of The Heir of Gay- 
mount which, after its appearance in the magazine, was 
issued as Number I of the ' ' Old Guard Library. ' ' The New 
York Day-Book is described as being an " Independent 
Democratic Paper" devoted to "WHITE SUPREM- 
ACY": 

"And standing now just where it did ten years ago, it therefore 
ignores, rejects and utterly repudiates ALL the combined efforts of 
fanatics, traitors and fools to MONGRELIZE the Government, and 
demands the RESTORATION OF THE WHITE REPUBLIC, not 
merely because it is best, but because the LOWER RACES cannot be 
incorporated in our political system without the utter destruction of 
Republican institutions. With a corps of writers abundantly com- 
petent to demonstrate this tremendous truth to the popular 
understanding, to convince the most ignorant and benighted that 
'Reconstruction' is abnormal, anti-social, and forever impracticable, 
The Day-Book confidently appeals to true Democrats everywhere to 
come to its aid in this great cause, and save Democratic institutions 
from the wreck and ruin otherwise inevitable." 

White Supremacy and Negro Subordination, a book by 
J. K. Van Evrie, was also advertised : 

"It explains the suicidal policy of the Mongrel Party in trying to 
make races equal that God has made unequal. ... It deals only 
with the fact — the fixed and everlasting fact — that God has made 
negroes a different and subordinate race and therefore designed them 
for a different and subordinate condition, and all who fail to recog- 
nize that design must, of necessity, aid in the destruction of society 
and the ruin of their country." 

As a monograph on the problems of reconstruction The 
Heir of Gay mount belongs in the same general category 
with the Van Evrie-Horton publications. In contrast, 
however, with the tone of the above-quoted advertisements 
Cooke's moderation was notable, but the value of his 
book as a document is conspicuously lessened by his failure 



328 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

to consider the negro. Between diatribe and ignoring there 
is little to choose. 

In spite of his enthusiastic effort to produce a novel 
economically influential and helpful, Cooke was discouraged 
in every way by The Heir of Gay mount. It was hard to 
write, a publisher was hard to find, and the book, when 
published, attracted little attention. The author was, how- 
ever, writing for a livelihood, and his tales of melodramatic 
adventure found a ready sale. The fame of Surry shone in 
sharp contrast with the immediate oblivion of the Heir. 
It is little surprising, then, that in his next two novels he 
should have turned again to the past which he ever loved 
more than the present and, in his search for romance, 
should have gone as far as the rocky coast of Wales. The 
Man Hunter and Out of the Foam were not merely remote 
from what Cooke knew ; they were at the opposite pole from 
what he had commendably undertaken in The Heir of Gay- 
mount. The Man Hunter was begun on July 9, 1869, and 
finished September 6, just before Cooke moved to "The 
Briars." Installed in his new home he devoted the re- 
mainder of the year to the composition of Out of the Foam, 
which in manuscript was called The Wolves of Pembroke- 
shire. "I think I can make something sensational of it," 
wrote Cooke when he began The Man Hunter. "Glad it's 
done," he said when he finished it. He liked Out of the 
Foam "of its sort. The sort is not literature and Reade 
invented it to make money. I am in want thereof, and 1 
write the Wolves to sell, as I would raise wheat or corn, or 
make coats if I were a tailor. I follow ' the fashion ' — when 
I should set it ! ... I have attempted a style and treatment 
not natural to me, and I do not propose, D. V., ever again 
to return to it. . . . 'Out of the Foam' is mere melo- 
drama." These two similar novels Cooke always regarded 
as his worst works, The Man Hunter appeared in the St. 



THE PROBLEMS OP RECONSTRUCTION 129 

Louis Home Journal, but was never reprinted. Out of the 
Foam "was sold, with Fairfax, to that jovial gentleman 
Mr. Carleton for $400, its full worth." It was published 
in 1871. 

Out of the Foam deals with the adventures of Edmund 
Earle, a young officer of the French Navy who, during the 
Anglo-French struggle of the last quarter of the eighteenth 
century, makes a raid upon the Welsh coast. Earle visits 
his supposed mother, a solitary who keeps a cliff beacon 
burning; and, because of his nautical prowess and his 
knowledge of the Romany Rye, is received into membership 
by the "Wolves," a band of smugglers and plunderers 
which infests the coast. In the neighborhood lives the evil 
Sir Murdaugh Westbrooke who is desperately anxious to 
kill Earle, and drive from the country the woman who 
guards the beacon light. Sir Murdaugh 's chief est joy is 
found in the dissection of corpses, and his zealous pursuit 
of the strange hobby leads him to rifle the grave of a 
"Wolf" who has died of hydrophobia. He unwittingly 
infects himself from the corpse and is later seized by the 
malady in the presence of a crowd assembled to see him 
married to Elinor Maverick, a lamia of the neighborhood. 
In ways too complicated to outline briefly it is discovered 
that Earle is the long ago stolen son and heir of a popular 
local marquis to whom Westbrooke is the apparent next of 
kin; and that the old solitary is not Earle 's mother but 
Westbrooke 's wife whom he has undertaken to despatch 
to the West Indies before his new wedding. To the intense 
delight of all, from the "Wolves" to the marquis, Earle 
marries Elinor's cousin, the virtuous Rose Maverick. 

The plot, thus briefly outlined, does not indicate fully the 
nature of the story. There are captures and escapes, an 
imprisonment in a charnel vault, sea fights, the mutilation 
of a marriage register, secret doors, and other incidents 



130 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

and devices relished by writers of the dime-novel. Cooke 
was always ashamed of Out of the Foam, but it is really an 
excellent story of its type. It has elements of adventure, 
mystery, and terror. It presents living embodiments of 
physical and moral ugliness in combat with brave and 
estimable persons in whose triumph one becomes something 
more than quietly interested. To secure a reader 's approval 
a novel must be a masterly study appealing to the intellect 
and reflecting true criticism of life, or, failing this, must be 
either delightful or sensational. Out of the Foam is neither 
masterly nor delightful, but it is highly sensational, and 
can withal be put down unfinished less easily than some of 
its author's better books. 

Cooke's determination to write books of a different type 
bore direct fruit. His next work in order of composition 
was Her Majesty the Queen, a historical romance of the 
downfall of Charles I. On February 10, 1870, he wrote 
entirely to his "satisfaction" the first "17 pp. of the 
'Story of Cecil.' " Since the new story was to be based in 
part on historical fact, the author was often "greatly de- 
layed by want of authorities of every sort." Her Majesty 
the Queen, as the "Story of Cecil" came to be called, was 
finished in thirty-two working days, but the difficulty in 
securing promptly the needed source-books caused its com- 
pletion to be delayed until November 16. The novel is 
supposedly the memoirs of a devoted Cavalier, one Edmund 
Cecil, who, when his master has been beheaded, crosses to 
Virginia to establish himself on the York River. The story, 
however, deals only with Edmund 's adventures in England. 
These are sufficiently dangerous, for ten narrow escapes 
from death are chronicled. Edmund's brother Henry is 
also an important figure. Each of the brothers loves Fran- 
ces Villiers, and each resolves to withdraw in favor of the 
other. Harry, however, soon falls in love with Alice Cary, 



THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 131 

a niece of Lord Falkland, marries her later, and con- 
tinues the English line at Cecil Court. The movements of 
Queen Henrietta Maria are followed rather closely, and 
Cooke dwells on her calmness and bravery. Although the 
Queen is the most prominent historical figure, attention is 
given to the king, Prince Rupert, the official headsman, and 
others; and space is devoted to the riots in London and to 
court life. 

As a tour-de-force attempting to reproduce an atmos- 
phere of the past, Her Majesty the Queen is of the manner 
of Henry Esmond, and, like Esmond, contains references to 
contemporary notables in politics and literature. Evelyn, 
Waller, Hampden and Milton are among those mentioned. 
The work aimed to afford a panorama of its period, but 
unfortunately lacks the little details indicative of a first- 
hand knowledge of the ground. The style is fluent and 
the incidents are well handled, but there are no high places 
— the narrative remains on a dead level. Cooke cherished 
the idea of having Her Majesty the Queen brought out in 
England, and after it was refused by the Harpers, cor- 
responded with his friend, Colonel Peyton, who was living 
in Guernsey. Peyton could accomplish nothing in the way 
of interesting a publisher, and suggested that Cooke send 
the novel direct to some London firm which he might con- 
sider likely to accept it. Cooke may have remembered the 
loss of his Jackson, for he seems never to have sent the 
manuscript to England. It was finally published by J. B. 
Lippincott and Company in 1873. 

In time of composition the beginning of Lee was dove- 
tailed into the end of Her Majesty the Queen, and when the 
life of the general was completed Cooke did not directly 
commence a new book. He was tired from continuous work, 
and was worried by the sickness of his son "Eddie," so he 
wrote a few magazine articles and worked out in his mind 



132 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

the plot of the later romance, Justin Harley. He also deter- 
mined on and began a revision of The Shadow on the Wall. 
On July 20 he sent two hundred pages to Sheffield and Stone 
of the St. Louis Home Journal. As composition proceeded, 
Cooke grew more and more delighted with the character 
of Dr. Vandyke, and consequently recalled the introductory 
chapters from Sheffield and Stone and offered the complete 
work, finished in December, to Appleton. He had succes- 
sively referred to the manuscript as The Bride of the 
Rivanna and At Midnight, but he readily agreed to Dr. 
Vandyke, the title suggested by Bunce, who intended to pub- 
lish the work in Appleton's Journal. Bunce later gave to 
a serial by De Mille the space reserved for Dr. Vandyke, 
but offered to print the latter as a volume. The author 
preferred octavo to the usual duodecimo, and the book 
appeared in 1872 with numerous full-page illustrations. 
The titular hero bears a strong resemblance to Dr. Fossyl 
in Ellie. There are, however, few traces of Cooke's ante- 
bellum manner. The story is wildly melodramatic. An in- 
sane nobleman, believing himself endowed with "second- 
sight, ' ' stabs his wife on the night of his wedding and then 
commits suicide ; two mentally diseased girls are rescued by 
the skilful doctor from their fearful predicament: one is 
led out to Christian cheerfulness, the other to happy wife- 
hood. Of such elements as these Cooke fabricates a plot 
which is typical of his later manner, and owes many inci- 
dents to his previous work. The scene of Dr. Vandyke is 
laid in Williamsburg and on the upper James River in late 
Colonial times. The Virginia names, Bland and Cary, are 
borne by characters, and reference is made to several fa- 
mous estates, such as William Byrd's "Westover." The 
Virginia Gazette and the vessel "Charming Sally" are 
mentioned; but in spite of these superficial local details, 
the story is not at all a reflection of Virginia life. It is 



THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 133 

not to be compared with The Virginia Comedians, the his- 
torical period of which it shares. 

The first instalment of Paul, the Hunter, the rewritten 
Pride of Falling Water, was sent to the St. Louis Home 
Journal on January 6, 1871, to replace the recalled Dr. Van- 
dyke. The work was finished on the third of August. Its 
scene is laid around Cooke's early haunts; "Glengary" is 
referred to, and the familiar Wagner of Fairfax is once 
more depicted. Cooke reserved the right to publish the 
work in volume form, but it was never reprinted. 

Before continuing — with Justin Harley and Canolles — 
in the field of Colonial times, Cooke wrote a novel of con- 
temporary society on the shore of the Chesapeake. The 
idea occurred to him on January 23, 1873 ; work was begun 
two days later ; and the book was finished on February 25. 
The growing manuscript was successively called Some Coun- 
try People, Jack Daintries, The Hollies, and Pretty Mrs. 
Gaston. Cooke's difficulty in his choice of a title is, as usual, 
interesting. The one first thought of is too colorless as 
well as too general. The second is not wholly appropriate, 
for Daintries is no more important than a half-dozen other 
characters. The Hollies is not altogether to be condemned, 
for it is the name of Mrs. Gaston's home at which many of 
the incidents take place. Of the four titles Pretty Mrs. 
Gaston is best, but it has no such definite appropriateness 
as, for instance, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, for the attractive 
widow is by no means a dominant figure in the book. 

Pretty Mrs. Gaston is a pleasant conventional story with 
a bothersome will, and the rescue of a sweet girl from in- 
jury ; and it culminates in a number of expected marriages. 
The book deserves neither praise nor blame. It served its 
temporary purpose, and is now forgotten. It is mildly 
diverting, but is of no interest as a record of life and man- 
ners, for it is Virginian only by the author 's statement. The 



134 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

persons are as conventional as the plot, and the events might 
have been localized at any spot where English-speaking 
people congregate. Pretty Mrs. Gaston was offered to Apple- 
ton's Journal, but was declined, the editor politely alleging 
that serials were not succeeding. It was brought out in 1874 
by the Orange Judd Company in an attractively bound 
duodecimo volume, copiously illustrated with cuts which are 
not only wretchedly executed, but show the slovenly artist's 
unfamiliarity with the story. The plump Mrs. Gaston, for 
instance, is depicted as much leaner than the slender Annie 
Bell. With Pretty Mrs. Gaston were bound two shorter 
stories, " Annie at the Corner," and "The Wedding at 
Duluth." 

As far back as July 27, 1872, Cooke had been revolving 
in his head a story of old Virginia which his wife wished 
him "to call Gary of Hunsdon," but which eventually 
appeared as Justin Hurley. Still a prey to worry at having 
followed the style of composition exemplified in Out of the 
Foam, he again' 'determined to abandon the Reade-Collinsish 
style of mystery and sensation and come to less spasmodic 
writing — depending on a 'pleasant' style and characteristic 
delineation of real life in Va." The latter he regarded as 
his ' ' true field. " " This I began with in the Comedians and 
St. John," he says, "and I think any literary individuality 
and real reputation I have based on my writings in this 
department." The writing of Cary of Hunsdon did not 
go forward well, and on January 14, 1873, the author made 
"a highly successful re-beginning of ' Carysbrook. ' " Now, 
however, came the interruption caused by the composition of 
Pretty Mrs. Gaston and, when resumed, the "Cary" story 
was as difficult as ever. Cooke decided to pattern the hero 
more or less closely on Harry Warren in the short story, 
' ' The Wedding at Duluth, ' ' and so far had kept to his idea 
of making the novel pleasant, descriptive, and historical, 



THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 135 

rather than sensational. George Cary Eggleston, who spent 
at "The Briars" the week of August 3, thought, from a 
perusal of the earlier portion, that the work was of the 
type of The Virginia Comedians, but perhaps superior. 
Cooke was "quite stirred ... up" by Eggleston 's visit, 
and "parted with him reluctantly." The publishers of 
To-day (Philadelphia) were, however, "anxiously await- 
ing" a large instalment of the novel, and Cooke hurried. 
He soon admittedly fell into sensationalism, but thought 
Justin Harley "tolerably good" in a "bad way." The 
story was an "immense favorite" with the readers of 
To-day and the publisher followed its serial run with its 
issue in 1875 in volume form under the imprint of Claxton, 
Remson & Haffelfinger (Philadelphia). The serial and the 
book were illustrated. "The illustrations by my friend 
Sheppard," said Cooke with excellent judgment, "are I 
must say atrocious. He seems not to have the least idea 
of the text." 

Justin Harley begins with a description of certain mem- 
bers of several old Virginia families, but these worthies 
are soon involved in the meshes of tawdry melodrama. The 
book not only exemplifies the impossibility of Cooke's going 
back at this period of his life to the style of The Virginia 
Comedians, but shows vividly how his inventiveness was 
flagging. The queer-minded Puccoon is Hunter John Myers 
of Leather Stocking and Silk. The Lady of the Snow is an 
actress, as is Beatrice Hallam. The attractive lowly child 
proves to be well-born, as in The Last of the Foresters and 
Ellie. The lovers take a Browningesque ride, as in Surry. 
The hero believes himself a murderer as in Mohun. There 
is the recovery of a person left supposedly dead, a feature 
found in Dr. Vandyke and Surry. Both St. Leger and 
Harley secure through accident the first embrace of a 
loved one — a trick common to many of Cooke's books. Mr. 



136 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

Hicks is Tugmuddle, and the imported Lincolnshire drain- 
age expert is a counterpart of the German gardener in 
The Heir of Gaymount. Many other parallels might be 
cited. In fact Justin Harley looks back for incident through 
Cooke's whole previous career as a writer of fiction. The 
novel has, however, a few portraits worthy of appearing in 
the Virginia Comedians gallery. One would like especially 
to know more of Judge Bland's aged mother who "was a 
perfect chronicle in herself of every Virginia family," and 
whose chamber was "drawing-room number two" for all 
comers to the house. 

It has been noted that Cooke, after the war, found the 
New York World immediately hospitable to his contribu- 
tions, and the Northern press in general ready to receive 
works from his pen. He did not, however, neglect Southern 
publications, and sent a number of papers to the Baltimore 
New Eclectic and its successor, the Southern Magazine, a 
brilliant but ephemeral monthly. In March, 1873, George 
Cary Eggleston wrote Cooke a letter expressing gratitude 
for encouragement when a young man in ante-bellum Rich- 
mond, and asking for contributions to Hearth and Home. 
Cooke replied with some manuscripts and for several years 
was a frequent contributor to his friend 's popular illustrat- 
ed weekly. Perhaps the most helpful of Cooke's Northern 
friends was, however, 0. B. Bunce of Appleton's Journal. 
From the late sixties well up to the end of the seventies, 
the Southern writer sent him scores of articles most 
of which were accepted and paid for promptly. The large 
amount of periodical literature produced by Cooke during 
the seventies was, as usual, chiefly of three types, Virginia 
history, criticism, and sentimental fiction. Cooke did not 
hesitate to make repeated use of a subject. A short inter- 
view with Thackeray during the latter 's tour of America 
resulted in "Thackeray and his 'People,' " "A Talk With 



THE PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 137 

Thackeray," "An Hour With Thackeray," and at least 
two other articles. The Virginia novelist found the English- 
man "a most excellent genial gentleman and companion." 
In a reply to a question Thackeray "smiled in a good-na- 
tured way, and said : ' I really don 't know where I got 
all the rascals in my works. I certainly have never lived 
with such people.' " 

Cooke seems to have done little in 1874 except write 
shorter papers for periodicals; for the early part of the 
year was the "hardest year yet, no wheat, no literary re- 
turns, nothing but esperance!" By June 27 he had writ- 
ten 450 pages of a novel dealing with the period of the 
Revolution and at first called Dinsmore, but later given the 
name Cary of Ilunsdon, a discarded title of Justin Harley. 
Like Thackeray and Dickens, who grieved over the killing 
of favorite characters, Cooke said of Andre: "I am much 
concerned about poor Andre who makes me melancholy." 
He determined to send the manuscript to Appleton, Leslie, 
and Harper in the order named. Leslie accepted, paying 
him $1,000 in four monthly instalments. The work was 
never reprinted. 

In his next book Cooke continued to use the American 
Revolution as a background. Canolles was finished on Au- 
gust 4, 1876, was published in the Detroit Free Press, and 
was brought out in book form in 1877 by Belford Brothers 
of Toronto. Canolles, the titular hero, is a Revolutionary 
warrior who fights on the American side, but not under 
the American flag, and is hence considered an outlaw. His 
capture and escape, rides in the swamp, fights, and love 
affairs make up the book. Lafayette, Wayne, Tarleton, 
and Arnold appear in brief scenes. Like a number of 
Cooke's stories, Canolles begins with the conventional yet 
effective opening, the man on horseback at sunset, and in 
other respects seems equally hackneyed — especially to one 



138 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

who has read all its predecessors. In its love and war ad- 
ventures it has elements decidedly suggestive of Surry; in 
its free handling of early American history it harks back 
to The Virginia Comedians. Its appearance in print marked 
the culmination of another stage of Cooke 's literary career, 
for he was never again to produce a novel in the field or in 
the manner of either of these two important works. 



CHAPTER V 
LAST YEAES— CONCLUSION 

Although John Esten Cooke never experienced an ill- 
ness serious enough to interrupt for any length of time his 
literary work, he was, on the contrary, never extremely 
robust. In the seventies he was afflicted with the neuralgia 
of the teeth which annoyed him in the fifties, had a yearly 
attack of hay-fever about September 1, and was troubled 
by other unpleasant though apparently transitory ailments. 
"I have had," he recorded in 1877, "an excruciating time 
with rheumatism which racked me day and night." 

Before Cooke had been married half a decade, he had be- 
gun to be perturbed over the state of his wife's health. In 
1873 Mrs. Cooke was badly shaken up by stepping off the 
porch at ' ' Pagebrook, " and in 1875 her husband noted her 
* ' lassitude. " " Mary is rather pulled down by the weather 
in spite of cod liver, ale and sherry, ' ' he wrote in the sum- 
mer of 1877. The intermittently composed diary contains 
the following entry for Cooke's birthday, November 3: 
"A charming, brilliant day, the perfection of weather to 
live in — and I am forty-seven ! It seems not much, but it is 
two-thirds of human life — which should make one thought- 
ful. There is nothing to do, but try to do your duty, love 
your neighbor, believe and trust in God and our Redeemer 
and leave the rest to a greater power than any on earth." 
The autumn and early winter saw the family in good health. 
Christmas passed with the usual festivities, an abundance 
of good things to eat, and numerous guests. The tree was 

139 



140 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

especially pretty ; it was decorated by Mrs. Cooke, who sup- 
plemented the usual features by placing artificial birds on 
the boughs. The entry telling of the holiday gaieties closes 
with the frequently used and jauntily penned motto, "Es- 
perance. " The word, as the journal stands, is crossed out 
and by it is written, "Finis, January 15, 1878." This entry, 
in his now to be discontinued diary, refers to the sudden 
death of his wife. 

When Cooke had somewhat recovered from his grief, his 
thoughts naturally turned to the future of his motherless 
children. He left them at "Saratoga," the home of their 
uncle, Powel Page, and journeyed to the Tidewater region 
of Virginia to pay a visit to his sister Sal at "Orapax" in 
New Kent County. Here he not only received mental com- 
fort, but returned home accompanied by Miss Mariah Pen- 
dleton Duval, his sister's eldest daughter, who for a while 
directed the education and upbringing of his children. 
Much as she loved her uncle's children, the gifted Miss 
Duval could not, of course, sacrifice a career to their ser- 
vice. The author's decision, therefore, was to keep his 
sons at home while he entrusted his daughter to her mother 's 
sister, Mrs. William Carter of "The Glen." The boys also 
paid frequent and extended visits to the house of their aunt, 
and thus "The Briars" was no longer the scene of the busy 
social activity which it had witnessed under its gracious 
mistress. 

The novelist is, in fact, described by many of his friends 
as having been a rather lonely figure during his widowed 
years. Miss Duval has given an excellent account of his 
life at this period. The stone mansion-house of "The 
Briars" was built in the form of an "L." On the right of 
the entrance was a spacious parlor lighted by four large 
windows with solid wooden shutters. The furniture of this 
room was old and quaint, and portraits of Cooke's parents 



LAST YEARS— CONCLUSION 141 

shared the wall-space with Confederate souvenirs among 
which was the coat that had once been Stuart's. The 
bereaved novelist daily placed a fresh flower in a vase be- 
fore the portrait of his wife which occupied the place of 
honor above the mantel. The parlor was, in the words of 
Miss Duval, "the abiding-place" of the writer. In a big 
leather chair to the left of the hearth he would lead morn- 
ing prayer, carry on conversation, or often sit in silent 
thought, his fingers placed tip to tip while his elbows rested 
on the arms of the chair. At table the novelist sat with a 
son at either side. The family always enjoyed right royal 
meals. One Christmas, for instance, the "very pleasant 
dinner" consisted of "ham (old), roast turkey, beefsteak, 
chine and cabbage, oyster soup, sherry, plum pudding, jelly, 
salsify, etc." 

After breakfast Cooke would normally devote himself 
to his literary projects. Usually, amid a cloud of smoke 
from a meerschaum of whose color he was very proud, he 
wrote nervously from nine until two, and could tolerate no 
interruption. Even the tapping of a dog's tail upon the 
floor is said to have annoyed him. In this seclusion he 
produced copy with great rapidity, though he naturally 
proceeded more carefully with books like his Virginia. 
In spite of the recommendation of a Northern friend, he 
never adopted the use of a typewriter, but to the end of 
his life his manuscript continued pleasant to look at and 
easy to read. Before his wife's death Cooke had made a 
practice of showing her his work as he composed it. She 
was not a thorough-going critic, but was often helpful, for 
instance in advising against the insertion in Her Majesty 
the Queen of one of Susie's baby songs. After his wife's 
death he often sought the critical judgment of his niece. 
His sister Sal, the member of his family with the best 
critical acumen, was unfortunately rarely near him. 



142 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

At two o'clock Cooke's working day was over. The after- 
noons and, sometimes, the mornings, were given to the man- 
agement of the farm and to odd jobs in the lawn or the 
garden. At four o'clock the family carriage always stood 
at the door for the daily drive to Millwood, the post office, 
five miles away; and the novelist, when he made the trip, 
would indulge in friendly chats with the occupants of other 
vehicles. In addition to the immediate family of himself 
and his wife, Cooke had many friends in the neighborhood. 
Notable among them was the ' ' humorous, bright and happy ' ' 
Mr. John Page of the nearby estate, "Longwood." Twi- 
light would often find either the Cookes walking across 
the fields toward his home, or him and his two daughters 
approaching "The Briars." Other friends were Captain 
William Nelson of "Linden," Captain William Carter of 
' ' The Glen, ' ' and Judge John Evelyn Page of ' ' Pagebrook ' ' 
— all three of whom were men of literary taste and culture. 
In the congenial atmosphere afforded by an occasional ex- 
change of visits with these and other acquaintances, Cooke 
carried forward his career as a man of letters. 

In the spring following the death of his wife Cooke again 
visited New York. Here he became for the first time 
familiar with the phonograph, and was profoundly im- 
pressed by it. He regretted to the end of his life that he 
had not preserved a record of his wife's voice which he 
always thought very beautiful and described as that of 
May Beverley in Surry of Eagle's-Nest. The contempla- 
tion of the new scientific marvel, together with the serious 
thought induced by the death of his wife, led him to write 
a novelette entitled Professor Pressensee, Materialist and 
Inventor. The story is told in the first person. The nar- 
rator recounts that in New York, in 1872, he "spends an 
evening at the Century Club, the resort of authors, artists 
and others of similar tastes." Here he sees a Professor 



LAST YEARS— CONCLUSION 143 

Pressensee and on the way back to the hotel helps protect 
him from three thugs who are trying to garrote him. Res- 
cuer and rescued become acquainted and the materialist 
professor asks the narrator to speak into the "phonometer": 
"I would test his wonderful machine; but what should I 
say to it ? I was not in a mood to whisper to it some inane 
jest; I was indeed the farthest possible from mirth. Re- 
volted by the fearful materialism of the inventor, I placed 
my mouth as he directed, and said deliberately, ' You assert, 
Professor Pressensee, that there is no personal Deity — that 
God is matter, and matter is God ; and Heat is the persistent 
Force creating all things. You utter a philosophic heresy. 
Behind Heat is Law, behind Law is the Absolute: this 
Absolute is the central Soul of the universe, in whose spirit- 
ual image you and I are made — the living God — before 
whom we will stand with all human beings we have loved 
or hated, to answer for the deeds done in the body.' " 
Pressensee 's answer is quoted on the title-page of the book : 
" 'I am Pressensee. I stand on that. Who or what made 
me I don't know. I do not believe in your future state, or 
your Absolute Soul. Man and the worm are the same. 
There is no Life after Death. Life is heat. Heat goes and 
death comes — that is all I know about it. Witness my hand 
and seal, Pressensee." 

The narrator leaves New York and two years later on a 
recuperating trip through the Virginia mountains is sur- 
prised to discover Pressensee and his daughter. The pro- 
fessor has lost his wife and is very much reduced in health. 
He has refused to allow his daughter to receive attentions 
from Henry Alford, a wealthy and manly young New 
Yorker who has followed them to Virginia and dwells in 
a cabin in the mountains. The young lady gets her feet 
wet and nearly dies of typhoid pneumonia, but rallies when 
her father, upon the advice of the narrator, allows Alford 



144 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

to see her. The old scientist has already passed from total 
atheism to a belief in a vindictive God, and actually prays 
at the crisis of his daughter's illness. After a few years 
the narrator again crosses the path of the Pressensee family. 
The lovers are now married and have two children, and 
the inventor, at last a believer in God, is devoting his time 
to the improvement of plows and harvesting machines. 
The novelette can perhaps be best described as colorless if 
not insipid. It has few of the qualities of a well-told story, 
and is weak as a piece of Christian propaganda, since the 
reasons for Pressensee 's assumption of faith are not made 
apparent. Professor Pressensee was published promptly 
(1878) in Harper's Half-Hour Series — a collection of small, 
thin volumes which retailed at from fifteen to twenty-five 
cents in paper covers or at fifteen cents additional in cloth. 
Cooke's next work of fiction of book length was a novel- 
ette somewhat of the type of Professor Pressensee. Like its 
predecessor, Mr. Grantley's Idea appeared in the dis- 
tinguished company afforded by the Half-Hour Series, and 
marked another point scored in the author's effort to break 
away from the melodramatic tendency that so thoroughly 
mastered him in the earlier seventies. The plot is not 
wholly a new one to Cooke, but shows a trend toward orig- 
inality. A boy snatches a necklace from a little girl, is 
caught by Higgins, the jailer, and is carried before the 
girl's father, a magistrate. The latter is about to sentence 
the culprit to be whipped, but the boy's despair at his an- 
ticipated disgrace leads the girl to plead for him. The girl's 
father, Mr. Heath, then imposes the minimum sentence — 
three days in jail on a bread and water diet. The boy, on 
the way to jail riding horseback behind Higgins, strikes 
him suddenly on the face, and effects an escape. In his 
haste he bruises his bare feet on the stones in the road and 
is taken into a carriage by a kindly Episcopalian bishop who 



LAST YEARS— CONCLUSION 145 

happens to be passing. Ten or twelve years later a young 
pastor is called to the village where the Heaths live and 
dwells with them while the parsonage is being repaired. 
The new minister is Mr. Grantley, formerly the boy rogue. 
In carrying out his "idea" he preaches his first sermon on 
the text, "Thou shalt not steal," and goes quietly to jail, 
where he remains three days. Finally he discovers that he 
loves Rose Heath, and is about to leave his charge, when, in 
an accidental meeting, he tells her his story. Rose says she 
loves him, draws closer to him, leans her head upon his 
breast, and speaks, "Can a husband steal from — his wife?" 
This ending would seem very unlike Cooke were it not for 
the typical explanation that the boy rogue is really the son 
of a Mr. Calvert Grantley, a very dear early friend of Mr. 
Heath. 

The real advance Cooke achieved in Mr. Grantley 's Idea 
was in the portrayal of rural life in Virginia. He gives 
a vivid picture of a chattering crowd around the church- 
door on Sunday. The practice "was not wrong. Bishop 
Meade had not disapproved of it. He had said, 'Oh, there 
is no harm in it. They are all related to each other, and 
many families only see each other on Sunday.' " "The 

Parish of B Becomes Excited" is an excellent chapter 

filled with gentle realistic satire directed perhaps at the 
Clarke village of Boyce. If the standard here set had been 
maintained by the entire book, the novelette might have been 
as permanent as some of its famous associates in The 
Half-Hour Series. True to rural Virginia custom is the 
following account of the arrival of the minister and of the 
lawn-party designed to yield certain needed funds: 

"When the ladies of B parish heard that a new minister was 

coming they fell into a nutter of curiosity and excitement. There 
is something in the ministerial office which attracts their sex. The 
person holding it is necessarily better and more intellectual than 



146 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

other people. When he is young, he is all the more interesting and 
must be looked after. 

"As to Mr. Grantley, he was said to be young, low-church in his 
views, and an excellent preacher. One or two of the ladies of the 
congregation had heard him preach in Richmond, and were rap- 
turous about him; he was so eloquent and fine-looking. This was 
dangerous. The new rector was beginning under disadvantages. 

"In a material point of view, the good looks, youth, and eloquence 
seemed about to prove an advantage. The ladies were going to take 
the young Timothy under their wing. They were much agitated. 
There was an animated discussion at a tea-drinking as to the color 
of his hair. Was he married? There was a determination to give 
him a cordial reception. 

"Excitement requires a safety-valve. This was supplied by the 
dilapidated condition of the parsonage. . . . 

". . . It would not do to have the new rector find the parsonage 
bo dilapidated. He had no children to protect from the leaks, but his 
eyes might be put out by the smoke while he was composing his 
sermons. Then the staircase might fall beneath him, and he might 
break his neck, which would be frightful. . . . 

"The parish was poor, the worthy people having little or nothing 
besides food for their families. They had been very well-off indeed 
once, but the war had changed things. ... It thus seemed impos- 
sible to raise money for repairs, and it was gained in a very short 
time. The ladies knew. There was a fair, a bazaar, a raffle, a series 
of tableaux, some private-public theatricals, and other devices were 
resorted to. Of course, the theatre, as an institution, was unutter- 
ably depraved, but this was quite innocent; and as to the raffling, 
that was strictly pious — it was not gambling at all, considering the 
object in view; and taking five-dollar notes in payment for single 
cigars was perfectly honest — it was for the church. 

"By such nefarious and strictly moral means the ladies soon 
found themselves in possession of a considerable little sum of money." 

As early as 1872, Cooke contemplated writing a work to 
be called "The Virginia Sketch-Book. " He referred to this 
project in 1873 and in 1881, but nothing came of it. To 
the June, 1876, Harper's, however, he contributed a long 
illustrated article entitled "Virginia in the Revolution." 



LAST YEARS— CONCLUSION 147 

The Harpers paid Cooke one hundred and fifty dollars 
for this article, and were evidently pleased with its recep- 
tion by the public, for in 1878 they asked the author to pre- 
pare, for issue in volume form, a series of stories from Vir- 
ginia history. For this work Cooke was offered only two 
hundred dollars, but, between his encyclopedia articles and 
his semi-historical novels, he was already familiar with the 
field and he accepted the commission. Stories of the Old 
Dominion was published in 1879 as a handsome, profusely 
illustrated octavo volume. The twenty-one stories, begin- 
ning with "The Adventures of Captain John Smith" and 
concluding with "The Surrender at Yorktown," cover 
the more dramatic episodes of Virginia history in the 
Colonial and Revolutionary periods, and are entertainingly 
told. When not true to facts, they are true to tradition, and 
show Cooke to have achieved his desire of doing a serious 
and valuable piece of work. The prologue, "About my 
Stories," and the impressive epilogue, "A Last Word to 
the Boys," indicate specifically the character of the book 
which was dedicated to the author's two sons. Cooke's 
style was always clear and direct, but here he made a 
special effort to be "simple." The unnecessary pains re- 
sulted in no greater cramping of his style than an occasional 
superfluous explanation of an easy term, such as: "It was 
proclaimed on coins, that is, pieces of money." A few 
defects of this nature do not, however, obscure the merit 
of a book some of whose chapters are charming as well as 
vigorous. Perhaps it was no hard task to give the flavor 
of romance to the story of Captain John Smith ; but other 
figures are as effectively handled. Very vivid is the picture 
of Daniel Morgan, who built his family seat with the labor 
of the hated Hessians and said in old age: "To be young 
once more. ... I would be willing to be stripped naked 
and hunted through the Blue Ridge with wild dogs. ' ' The 



148 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

purpose of Cooke's work was admirable; he wished to make 
great and good men of the young Virginians who read it. 
The inspirational epilogue may well have influenced his 
younger son who, in Walter Reed's yellow fever experi- 
ments in Cuba, offered his life with as much bravery as any 
ancestor had ever shown in facing a human enemy. 

Cooke's next book, The Virginia Bohemians, was a long 
novel which was published by the Harpers in 1880. It was 
in its conception another serious effort at producing a work 
of value. It includes elements from its fictional next older 
brother, Mr. Grantley's Idea, but can best be described as 
a hybrid partaking of the nature of The Virginia Comedians 
on one hand and The Heir of Gaymount on the other. For 
true local color, The Virginia Bohemians holds primacy 
among Cooke's novels. The name Bohemia, given to a 
mountain valley, was perhaps suggested by "Arabia," the 
actual name of such a valley in Clarke County. Across the 
Blue Ridge from Bohemia lies — in the story — the little 
village of Piedmont. Piedmont, of course, is the name of 
a broad belt through Virginia, and the village is intended to 
be typical. The two churches, the town pump, the black- 
smith shop with the crowd of small boys, the village store 
with a porch full of idlers awaiting the stage — all these are 
excellently presented, especially in the chapter entitled 
' ' Piedmont wakes up. ' ' This part of the novel is of " photo- 
graphic accuracy to Virginia life," as Margaret Junkin 
Preston described it. Of nearly equal merit is Cooke's 
description of the circus and its effect on Piedmont. Here, 
however, he exhibits a habit which is one of the main char- 
acteristics of another Southern writer, Mrs. Augusta Evans 
Wilson : he parades his learning in numerous literary and 
historical allusions and in the use of foreign and unangli- 
cized words. In a single short paragraph, for example, 
there are a half-dozen allusions, and "aura," "populus," 



LAST YEARS— CONCLUSION 149 

"ennui," and "elite," appear. Of the plot, nothing need 
be said save that it inclines to Cooke's more complicated 
type and fails to share the freshness of the setting. There 
are mountaineers and impoverished aristocrats, sweet young 
girls and an adventuress, a New Yorker, old soldiers, a few 
negroes of the household servant class, and a gallery of 
circus people. The chapter entitled "The Old Chapel" is 
Cooke's effort to give the immortality of print to a beloved 
old church in" Clarke. Ellis Grantham suggests Mr. Grant- 
ley of Mr. Grantle'y's Idea, and is probably Cooke's portrait 
of the ideal minister. General Lascelles is an excellent por- 
trait ; there were many of the type in Virginia. The old 
general is always glad to have a guest in his study so that 
if he wishes "to ejaculate denunciations connected with 
contemporary politics," they may be heard. The Big 
Monopoly Railroad is attacked as the cause of low prices of 
farm produce and such sentences as the following are in- 
serted : ' ' Crossing the big white Chester and the small black 
Essex, he produced a species like the Berkshire, which he 
said was the best hog of all." Such observations of 
course give tedium to the plot; but, on the other hand, 
serve to fill out Cooke's picture of the Virginia of 1880. 

The usually unfavorable opinion of the Boston critics, 
some of whose hostile criticism Cooke consolidated in the 
preface to Hilt to Hilt, did not prevent Houghton, Mifflin 
and Company from recognizing the substantial merit of 
the Southern author. Cooke was asked to write the history 
of Virginia for the "American Commonwealths" series, 
edited by Horace E. Scudder. He spent more time on this 
history than on any book he ever wrote and must have 
taken delight in going systematically through the older his- 
tories and other sources, and refreshing his mind on the 
facts and legends which had charmed him from boyhood. 
Much of the matter from Stories of the Old Domimon is of 



150 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

course repeated in Virginia; A History of the People, but 
the composition of the previous work did not unduly influ- 
ence the latter, as any random comparison will show. With 
only about thirty-five of over five hundred pages devoted 
to the years since 1800, Virginia is strictly a history of 
Colonial Virginia and the state's part in founding the 
nation. For the first two centuries of Virginia history, 
however, Cooke's volume is an excellent manual, accurate 
enough for the ordinary reader and intensely interesting. 
The author preserves a fine balance between the sweeping 
events of war at one extreme and the depiction of the quiet 
life of the people at the other, and, without a vigilant regard 
for the whole truth, succeeds, like Macaulay, in giving to 
history the glamor of fiction. 

Upon its appearance in 1883, Virginia commanded wide 
and favorable attention. The New York Critic spoke of its 
"interest," and its "earnest desire to do all parties and 
religions perfect justice." The New York Times was hos- 
tile, but the new work was praised by the Evening Post and 
the Sun. The latter was especially complimentary: "It 
would be not easy to speak of this performance in terms of 
too hearty commendation. There is no man of letters in 
this country so manifestly qualified for the task here under- 
taken, and it would have been almost impertinent to have 
selected any other." On February 4, 1884, Stedman wrote 
Cooke a very interesting letter, urging a visit to New York, 
and giving an opinion of Virginia. "You would have done 
well to use less of the ' animated present tense, ' " he said ; 
but otherwise he liked the history. ' ' The narrative is clear, 
synthetic, fluent, and vivid in every way; Virginians and 
all other Americans owe you a debt for this graceful and 
scholarly work." 

The chapter on "Virginia Literature in the Nineteenth 
Century" lists a number of books and writers and affords 



LAST YEARS— CONCLUSION 151 

an insight into the literary views of Cooke who concludes: 
"Whatever may be the true rank of the literature, it 
possesses a distinct character. It may be said of it with 
truth that it is nowhere offensive to delicacy or piety; or 
endeavors to instill a belief in what ought not to be believed. 
It is a very great deal to say of the literature of any 
country in the nineteenth century." Although it failed 
to achieve the spectacular initial success of Surry of 
Eagle's-Nest, Virginia has had the steadiest sale of any of 
Cooke's books. To the edition of 1903, there was added a 
supplementary chapter by William G. Brown ; and by 1915 
thirty impressions all told had been printed and approx- 
imately thirteen thousand copies had been sold. 

Cooke relieved the strain of his arduous work on Virginia 
by the composition of Fanchette which appeared in 1883, a 
few months ahead of the history. The novel was issued by 
James R. Osgood and Company of Boston in the anonymous 
Round-Robin series. Around a device on the title-page, the 
books of this series carried the motto ' ' Perhaps it may turn 
out a song, Perhaps turn out a sermon." Fanchette is 
neither a sermon nor a song, but a very melodramatic tale 
which owes a part of its plot to The Virginia Comedians, 
the master work to which Cooke so often turned when the 
candle of his inspiration was dim or flickering. Like 
Beatrice, Fanchette hates the stage, goes about with the 
actor who fathered her when she was orphaned, and marries 
the serious person who performs a heroic rescue. The plot 
of Fanchette is complicated, and in one respect repulsive. 
Detail after detail leads the reader to suspect that Armyn 
is Fanchette 's father, and their marriage comes as a dis- 
tinct shock. Cooke begins the story with a view of 
Washington life in the summer of the year of a Presidential 
election, presumably that of 1880, but in short order in- 
troduces a ruined Russian prince, an oriental prophet, a 



152 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

lady in a tower, and a Rajah of Kabul. One is reminded of 
The Heir of Gaymount where buried treasure crept into 
what purported to be an economic study. Cooke's views 
on contemporary fiction are aired in a conversation between 
the cultivated middle-aged Waring and the ebullient 
Armyn. Armyn reads "a good deal of light literature — it 
is a rest; rarely novels." Waring ironically assures him 
that he is missing "the dissection of souls, the analysis of 
the human heart. ' ' Fanchette is not in any sense a notable 
story; but it shows the development of Cooke's character. 
A bereaved man speaks more than once in an unobtrusive 
passage in the frequently subjective Stories of the Old 
Dominion, and in Fanchette there is occasionally a personal 
note. The author was doubtless thinking of his dead wife 
when he wrote passages like the following : ' ' Given a gallant 
young company, and a cloudless sky, life is always gay. It 
is only when the sun goes down, and the gray-beard at the 
helm hears the moan of the sea, that he thinks of the 
unknown port to which he is steering." In Fanchette 
Cooke has more than his usual number of arresting sen- 
tences. His style seems pithier. It was perhaps benefited 
by the thoughtful attention given to the history of Virginia. 
As early as 1859 Thomas Dunn English, writing to Cooke 
relative to a proposed lecturing tour in which they should 
"hunt in couples" or "drive tandem," suggested that the 
Virginia novelist write a story with one of Captain John 
Smith's men as the hero. Ten years later English again 
suggested the subject, this time in more detail. "There is," 
he wrote, "one subject for you, which you have not 
touched — for the reason that a man rarely knows the most 
fertile field to cultivate. When you do touch it, you will 
make a success. I mean the early settlement of the Old 
Dominion. When you make up your mind to trot out 
Captain John Smith as a hero, and Pocahontas as a heroine, 



LAST YEARS— CONCLUSION 153 

let me know, and I will furnish you with some data acces- 
sible enough here, but out of your reach in your region. 
A good long novel of that period is a desideratum — and you 
are the man to do it. It's an opportune time, too. The 
public are growing tired of society novels, war stories and 
criminal romances." 

With this encouragement and his fondness for Colonial 
Virginia, it is surprising that Cooke did not sooner weave a 
romance around the settlement at Jamestown. At last, 
however, he wrote My Lady Pokahontas, and it was pub- 
lished by Houghton, Mifflin and Company early in 1885. 
As in The Virginia Comedians and Surry of Eagle's-Nest, 
Cooke does not tell the story directly, but merely furnishes 
"notes" to a "True Relation of Virginia, Writ by Anas 
Todkill, Puritan and Pilgrim." True to its pretence of 
being a document of the early seventeenth century, the work 
is studded with certain linguistic archaisms, but the style is 
essentially modern in its grace, simplicity, and cleverness. 
Cooke once thought of writing a series of tales localized in 
the Mermaid Tavern, and in My Lady Pokahontas he intro- 
duces that famous hostelry. As in Her Majesty the Queen, 
he makes his quota of allusions. Shakespeare is mentioned 
repeatedly, and Todkill states the "fact" that "Master 
Shakespeare" made "his strange Caliban" of Rawhunt, a 
dwarf henchman of Powhatan, and "his Miranda" of 
Pocahontas. Cooke's story is agreeable but is practically 
devoid of plot apart from the love of Pocahontas and Smith, 
and the Indian girl's transfer of her affection when she 
is convinced that the famous captain is dead. My Lady 
Pokahontas occupies a prominent place in the long list 1 of 
novels, plays, and poems which deal with its titular heroine. 

i The Pocahontas story is thoroughly discussed in Mr. Jay B. 
Hubbell's fascinating and scholarly forthcoming work, Virginia Life 
in Fiction. 



154 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

Master Anas's reminiscences are, however, far too tenuous 
to be the great novel for which Thomas Dunn English had 
hoped. 

Later in 1885 Cooke's last book, The Maurice Mystery, 
was brought out by D. Appleton and Company. The scene 
of the novel is laid ' ' in what is called the Piedmont region 
— that is to say, the eastern slope of the long range of 
mountains extending from Maryland to Northern Georgia. ' ' 
The time is 1880, but the ''mystery" goes back to 1860 
when a murder was committed at "Mauricewood," an old 
family seat. The interest of the book is divided between the 
Cary-Haworth love affair and the discovery of the mur- 
derer, the plot suggesting Bulwer-Lytton 's Devereux. The 
Maurice Mystery contains many reflections of the author's 
personality. Cooke discusses life after death — a problem 
that seems to have obsessed him after the loss of his wife. 
He refers to Pontmartin, Browning, and other writers in 
whom he was interested. French and Latin phrases are 
printed with typographical errors. Romance is sought by 
including among the characters an opium fiend and some 
adventurers who have lived in South America. Such well- 
worn tricks as concealed identity and mutilated records are 
again made use of. Despite its background in the Piedmont 
region of the South, the novel has no local color. It was 
reprinted by the G. W. Dillingham Company, but has slight 
claim to continued life. 

In the eighties Cook continued writing for periodicals. 
True to his democratic instinct he wrote occasionally 
throughout his life unpaid-for pieces for the local weeklies 
of Clarke and other counties. Just as he might have handed 
around to guests a basket of the fruit which he was selling, 
so he let his literary talent serve his neighbors as well as 
earn him a livelihood. He now produced less poetry than 
before the war, but it was of the same type, fluent, unpol- 



LAST YEARS— CONCLUSION 155 

ished, trite. He always wished to visit England, and in 
later life became intimate with several English families in 
the county of Fauquier. As a compliment to these friends, 
he wrote "A Sigh for England;" but neither subject nor 
occasion inspired him to a very distinguished composition : 

A SIGH FOR ENGLAND 

If I could choose this golden morn 
Of summer when the days are long, 

My music, I would listen to 
The English skylark's song. 

If I could see what more than all 

In the wide world I long to see, 
Give me the English sunshine dashed 

On castle, tower or tree. 

Only to tread where Shakespeare trod, 

Only to see the daisies grow, 
Only to hear, in English trees, 

The wind's talk, soft and low. 

But swiftly fly the passing years, 

And all is but a dream at best; 
I dream of the dear English fields 

To waken in the West. 

In his later years Cooke wrote less frequently for the 
New York and other Eastern publications. On the contrary 
he contributed frequently to the Detroit Free Press and the 
Southern World. He produced, as usual, stories, serials, 
and articles; but was, for new bodies of readers, largely 
working over his old productions. Even in his contribu- 
tions to Harper's his loss of originality was striking. "The 
Writer of the Declaration of Independence; A Familiar 
Sketch" is, for instance, a reworking of the data given in 



156 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

the appendix to The Youth of Jefferson, and also owes 
something to Cooke's encyclopedia article on Jefferson. Of 
the stories "The Craniologist" and "Owlet" may be 
noticed. The former reflects the interest in science and 
philosophy which was characteristic of the author's later 
life." The latter shows how Cooke in a short story combined 
certain incidents of his experience with the conventional 
ingredients of his later novels. A young lawyer of 

"R ," tired from "confinement and overwork" during 

the summer, sets out on horseback for the Valley of Virginia 
where he has "a number of hospitable and warm-hearted 
relations." On his journey the narrator stops at the cabin 
of Daddy Bayne and there meets "Owlet," a pretty but 
wholly untaught girl. Later "Owlet" is taken into the 
home of the narrator's aunt. She receives polish rapidly, 
proves to be an English heiress, and is married to the man 
who discovered her at Daddy Bayne 's. 

The last years of Cooke's life were uneventful. An occa- 
sional visit to New York and the companionship of friends 
were the chief diversions from his settled routine. In his 
pleasant home he was proud of his children who, as he 
justly thought, were growing up with honor to their an- 
cestry. The author regularly attended Christ Church at 
Millwood. Here, with his boys, he occupied the family pew, 
and the three reverently took part in the service. After the 
exercises Cooke would indulge in a neighborly chat with 
other worshipers, and would often go for dinner with 
Dr. C. Braxton Bryan at the rectory, or with other friends 
in the vicinity. 

In the summer of 1886 Cooke's sister Sal was with him. 
He was working on a novel destined for the Detroit Free 
Press, but Dr. Favart's Strange Experiences was never 
completed. Although the author toward the end of Sep- 
tember became feeble and languid, neither he nor his family 



LAST YEARS— CONCLUSION 157 

realized how ill lie was until he fainted in his chair. A 
physician was summoned, but for three days Cooke per- 
sisted in an effort to throw off his illness. At last he could 
resist no longer; he yielded to his malady which was 
typhoid fever, and, very ill indeed, was put to bed. He 
died the next day, September 27, 1886. He was laid to rest 
beside his wife, and near two of his brothers, in the Old 
Chapel burying-ground. In memory of his brilliant 
nephews, the last of whom he survived by nearly a decade, 
General Philip St. George Cooke presented to the Millwood 
Church a stained-glass window. The lily in this window 
has a dual significance. It refers to the descent of the 
Cookes from the Esten family of Bermuda, and at the same 
time symbolizes the peace that at length came to a family 
torn asunder by the Civil War. 

Little need be said of Cooke the man. His only surviving 
son, Robert, once wrote to his sister that they had more 
right to be proud of their father 's Christian character than 
of his literary fame. This is certainly true. Whatever 
may be said of Cooke's talent as a writer, his character is 
above reproach. Thousands of pages of letters and other 
personal manuscripts contain not the slightest suggestion 
that he was ever inspired by any save the highest motives. 
"Time had wrought no change in his nature," said George 
Cary Eggleston. "He remained to the end the high- 
spirited, duty-loving man of honor that I had known in 
my youth ; he remained also the gentle, affectionate and 
unfailingly courteous gentleman he had always been." 
Cooke was as pure and honorable in his life as he strove to 
be in his books. He was from first to last a democrat, a 
gentleman, and a Christian in the best sense of each word. 

Although Cooke '8 death was widely noted, it resulted in 
no serious estimates of his career, and probably did not 
impress the literary world as much as it would have done 



158 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

had it occurred in 1859 or in 1867. In the former year 
he was not yet thirty, but was a leader in the Southern 
Literary Messenger group of writers, and had made an im- 
portant contribution to the literature of his native state. 
In the latter year he was at the apex of his success as a 
writer of Civil War stories with a Southern bias. Despite 
the merit of his historical work in the eighties, Cooke did 
not keep as fully in the public eye as he had done. In his 
seclusion at "The Briars" he lacked vigorous intellectual 
stimulus. By the time of his death his name was being 
crowded out of the better magazines by younger writers, 
who were more careful if not more talented. 

Cooke has now been dead a third of a century and it is 
time for some estimate to be placed on his work. First of 
all, it should be said that he was not a great literary genius 
and neither claimed nor thought he was. He always re- 
ferred to his talent as less than that of his eldest brother, 
and his judgment was correct. Philip Pendleton Cooke was 
an ill-starred genius, comparable in many ways to Edgar 
Allan Poe. When he died at the age of thirty-three he had 
produced but one book. In striking contrast, John Esten 
Cooke was enormously prolific. In an active career of little 
more than three decades he served through the Civil War, 
devoted himself in his later years to the management of a 
farm, and yet produced thirty books, together with an 
amount of fugitive matter which would fill at least fifteen 
volumes. Cooke's fluency was the cause of his chief faults. 
He wrote far too rapidly for his training and talents. 
Unlike Philip, he had not received a university education, 
and the want of it is seen in much that he wrote. He dis- 
liked revision, and consequently shows an occasional irreg- 
ular sentence. He produced contiguous passages and con- 
tiguous chapters of vastly unequal merit. He was weak 
in invention; many incidents in his later works are copied 



LAST YEARS— CONCLUSION 159 

from some earlier production. He failed to adapt his 
characters to his setting. His world-traveled, melodramatic 
heroes and villains are out of place in a Virginia back- 
ground. Most of his female characters are of one pattern 
and are particularly weak. They are described as delicate, 
sprightly ' * little beauties," but to the reader they appear 
immature and colorless. Throughout his career Cooke 
made the mistake of writing on subjects with which he 
was not wholly familiar. According to his lights, how- 
ever, his justification is complete. Under no disillusion 
in regard to his genius, he would turn from one species 
of composition to another, as a farmer might change 
his crops, with the idea of financial profit. In his later 
years his worst work paid best. This seeming anomaly en- 
couraged a natural taste for sentimentality and sensation- 
alism and shut him off from achieving his finer possibilities. 
Dr. C. Braxton Bryan bears testimony to the fact that the 
author more than once said, "I have been obliged to stop 
what I was doing and write something for checks." 
Cooke, nevertheless, achieved more than a modicum of dis- 
tinction. His style is uniformly clear and agreeable. He 
usually had an eye for the picturesque. His movement is 
rapid and his dialogue is normally true to life. In every- 
thing he wrote, there is an element of sprightliness, dash, 
and manliness. Cooke was a gentleman-romancer who 
wrote while the spell of composition was upon him and 
devoted himself to his family and friends instead of revising 
his manuscript. 

In spite of the fairly brief span of his life, Cooke was 
undoubtedly the most representative Virginian who has 
ever earned a livelihood by writing. Born in 1830 in what 
is now West Virginia, he knew, almost at first hand, the 
Colonial border. He lived in the Richmond of the fifties. 
He saw the full stress of the Civil War. Later as a fairly 



160 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

well-to-do farmer he shared the position of thousands of 
modern Virginians. 

Cooke was not only a typical Virginia writer, but no 
other before or since has given such whole-hearted devotion 
to the service of the Old Dominion. In his Stories of the 
Old Dominion and Virginia he swept the history of the state 
from 1607 to 1800, and in his fiction he made use of early 
colonial, late colonial, Revolutionary, ante-bellum, civil war, 
and post-bellum settings. He chose for his background the 
border as well as the capital ; and, throughout all his works, 
his spirit toward his native state was one of loyalty and 
love. When the present seemed sordid in 1850, he sought 
romance in the past. When Virginia was faced with dis- 
aster in the dark days following the Civil War he sought, 
in his way, to help solve her problems. 

On the whole, however, Cooke was not so much the advo- 
cate, as the social historian, of Virginia. "My aim," he 
wrote, "has been to paint the Virginia phase of American 
society, to do for the Old Dominion what Cooper has done 
for the Indians, Simms for the Revolutionary drama in 
South Carolina, Irving for the Dutch Knickerbockers, and 
Hawthorne for the weird Puritan life of New England." 
In this worthy ambition Cooke was more than partially 
successful. His pictures of older Virginia, inaccurate as 
they may be in minor details, have been accepted by such 
modern writers as Thomas Nelson Page. His histories and 
biographies greatly influenced the Susan Pendleton Lee 
histories of the United States which have secured an im- 
mense circulation through their use in Southern public 
schools. Cooke in fact, partly through his own books but 
more particularly through his influence, is responsible for 
the idea of older Virginia held by the Virginians of today. 

Cooke is not only intrinsically important as a typical 
and influential Virginia writer, but is a definite link in the 



LAST YEARS— CONCLUSION 161 

development of literature pertaining to Virginia. His ulti- 
mate literary ancestor was Scott, whose works were read to 
him in childhood, and he is a younger brother of Simms. 
William Alexander Caruthers, who was writing during 
Cooke's boyhood, was his immediate predecessor as a his- 
torical novelist of Virginia. The influence of these writers 
can, however, be easily exaggerated. Cooke shared their 
general purpose rather than imitated any particular book 
or method. He, in turn, has handed down the tradition — 
especially to Miss Mary Johnston and Mrs. Burton Harri- 
son. The Long Roll and Cease Firing invite comparison 
with Surry and Mohun, just as Flower de Hundred in its 
very title recalls Henry St. John. 

In the eighties Cooke was an exponent of the same type 
of novel he wrote in the fifties. An apologia, written a 
short while before his death, has been widely published: 
"I still write stories for such periodicals as are inclined to 
accept romance, but whether any more of my work in that 
field will appear in book-form is uncertain. Mr. Howells 
and the other realists have crowded me out of popular 
regard as a novelist, and have brought the kind of fiction 
I write into general disfavor. I do not complain of that, 
for they are right. They see, as I do, that fiction should 
faithfully reflect life, and they obey the law, while I can- 
not. I was born too soon, and am now too old to learn 
my trade anew. But in literature, as in everything else, 
advance should be the law, and he who stands still has no 
right to complain if he is left behind. Besides, the fires 
of ambition are burned out of me, and I am serenely happy. 
My wheat-fields are green as I look out from the porch of 
'The Briars,' the corn rustles in the wind, and the great 
trees give me shade upon the lawn. My three children are 
growing up in such nurture and admonition as their race 
has always deemed fit, and I am not only content, but very 



162 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

happy, and much too lazy to entertain any other feeling 
toward my victors than one of warm friendship and sincere 
approval." Strange as it may seem, the very fact that 
Cooke had never discarded the romantic tradition, led him 
to be regarded as a pioneer in the romantic revival which 
was headed by Stevenson. 

In concluding, an answer should perhaps be made to the 
hypothetical question, what is the status of John Esten 
Cooke in 1922? Professor Pattee, a leading historian of 
recent American literature, rates Cooke as "the best nov- 
elist the South produced during the earlier period." It 
must be admitted, nevertheless, that to most Americans 
Cooke is either unknown or, at most, a name. A few 
Northerners and a goodly number of Southerners, have, 
however, read Surry of Eagle's-Nest, and perhaps Mohun 
and Hilt to Hilt. Others have read one or both of the mili- 
tary biographies. In the six months ending April 30, 1914, 
ninety-two copies of Virginia and thirty-two copies of My 
Lady Pokahontas were sold. At the same time fourteen 
volumes, in the form of cheap reprints, were on sale by the 
G. W. Dillingham Company. The recent failure of this 
house has practically put an end to the sale of Cooke's 
books, but will help his future reputation. On the Dilling- 
ham list he was in poorer company than he deserved, and 
was brought into disfavor by an ungrammatical, inaccurate, 
widely circulated advertisement. 

A thoroughly impartial appraisal of Cooke results in a 
protest against his being wholly forgotten. The question 
then arises, what should be salvaged from an abundance 
threatened with oblivion? Cooke's poetry is not of en- 
during value; his faults are unduly conspicuous in his 
shorter prose articles; and his lives of Lee and Jackson 
have already been superseded. In spite of their excellence, 
Virginia and Stories of the Old Dominion must inevitably 



LAST YEARS— CONCLUSION 163 

await the fate of the biographies. The choice is then nar- 
rowed down to the novels. Perhaps a half-score of these 
deserve to live. The two volumes of The Virginia Come- 
dians, Surry, and Mohun should by all means be kept con- 
tinually available for American readers. The first is 
Cooke's best novel; it is a sweeping portrayal of a field he 
knew and loved when he was not yet tired from over- 
production. Surry and Mohun were his most popular 
books, and are still his best remembered works. They con- 
tain an essential record of his personal Civil War experi- 
ence, and give almost as well as the biographies his impres- 
sions of the great generals. These two novels — compounded 
as they are of history, adventure, and idealism — are further- 
more of a type well adapted to the youthful readers of the 
future. Cooke, it would seem in conclusion, will be remem- 
bered chiefly for The Virginia Comedians, Surry of Eagle's- 
Nest, and Mohun. With these four volumes saved from ob- 
livion, he will continue to be known as a social historian of 
late Colonial Virginia, and as a romantic Confederate cap- 
tain, who used his military experience as the basis of fiction. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 



BOOKS 



In the text subtitles have been given and important later 
editions have been discussed. 

1. 1854. Leather Stocking and Silk. New York: Harper 

and Brothers. 
2,3.1854. The Virginia Comedians. (2 vols.) New York: D. 

Appleton and Company. 
The Youth of Jefferson. New York: Redfield. 
Ellie. Richmond : A. Morris. 
1856. The Last of the Foresters. New York: Derby and 

Jackson. 
Henry St. John, Gentleman. New Fork : Harper 

and Brothers. 
1863. The Life of Stonewall Jackson. Richmond : Ayres 

and Wade. 
Stonewall Jackson : A Military Biography. New 

York : D. Appleton and Company. 
Surry of Eagles'-Nest. New York: Bunce and 

Huntington. 
Wearing of the Gray. New York : E. B. Treat and 

Company. 
Fairfax. New York : G. W. Carleton and Company. 
Hilt to Hilt. New York: G. W. Carleton and 

Company. 

14. 1869. Mohun. New York: F. J. Huntington and Com- 

pany. 

15. 1870. Hammer and Rapier. New York: Carleton. 

16. 1870. The Heir of Gaymount. New York: Van Evrie, 

Horton and Company. 

17. 1871. A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee. New York: D. 

Appleton and Company. 
164 



4. 


1854. 


5. 


1855. 


6. 


1856. 


7. 


1859. 


8. 


1863. 


9. 


1866. 


10. 


1866. 


11. 


1867. 


12. 


1868. 


13. 


1869. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 165 

18. 1872. Out of the Foam. New York: G. W. Carleton 

and Company. 

19. 1872. Dr. Vandyke. New York: D. Appleton and Com- 

pany. 

20. 1873. Her Majesty the Queen. Philadelphia: J. B. Lip- 

pincott and Company. 

21. 1874. Pretty Mrs. Gaston, and other stories. New York: 

Orange Judd Company. 

22. 1875. Justin Harley. Philadelphia: Claxton, Remson and 

Haffelfinger. 

23. 1877. Canolles. Toronto : Belford Brothers. 

24. 1878. Professor Pressensee. New York: Harper and 

Brothers. 

25. 1879. Mr. Grantley's Idea. New York: Harper and 

Brothers. 

26. 1879. Stories of the Old Dominion. New York: Harper 

and Brothers. 

27. 1880. The Virginia Bohemians. New York: Harper and 

Brothers. 

28. 1883. Panchette. Boston : James R. Osgood and Company. 

29. 1883. Virginia. Boston : Houghton, Mifflin and Company. 

30. 1885. My Lady Pokahontas. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin 

and Company. 

31. 1885. The Maurice Mystery. New York: D. Appleton and 

Company. 

MAGAZINE ARTICLES 

At various periods during his life Cooke contributed more or 
less regularly to over forty periodicals, most of which have been 
referred to in the text. Below is given a bibliography for four 
magazines. The four are chosen partly because of their literary 
importance and consequent present-day accessibility, but chiefly 
because of the fact that they received a large portion of Cooke's 
most carefully composed fugitive work. 

The Southern Literary Messenger 

Editorials and short book notices are not included in this list. 

1848: November, "Avalon." 

1849: January, "Eighteen Sonnets, With Notes." 



166 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

1850: June, "Thomas Carlyle and his 'Latter-Day Pam- 
phlets';" July, "The Dawning;" October, "Levon: A Memory." 

1851: February and March, "Shadows of the Mountain 
Pine;" March, "Deliciae Orientis;" April, "To a Portrait," 
"Recollections of Sully," To and ;" May, "To Kos- 
suth;" August, "Hungary;" September, "Winderhaus and the 
Gentleman in Black," "Indian Wars of Western Virginia;" 
October and November, "Shadows of the Pine Forest." 

1852: January, "The Story of Good Mr. Bear;" May, 
"Peony: A Tale for the Times;" July, "Clouds," "My River 
Rhine;" August-September, "Chronicles of the Valley of Vir- 
ginia;" August, "I Left the South Behind Me," "Autumn 
Days," "Country Notes;" December, "A Handful of Autumn 
Leaves." 

1853: January, "Peachblossom and Ladyslipper," "Psyche 
looked on me with her luminous eyes;" February, "Sieur 
Roger;" June, "An Angling Reminiscence;" July, "News From 
Farnienteland ;" December, "Autumn Dreams." 

1854: July, "The Plover Loves the Moor;" August, "Lie Still, 
Poor Heart;" October-January (1855), "The Last Days of Gas- 
ton Phoebus;" December, "Invocation." 

1855: May-September, "A Kingdom Mortgaged;" December, 
"Virginia Woods." 

1856 : January, "Under the Grassland Oaks," "The Winds of 
Childhood;" July, "Sully's Forest Days," "Virginia Girls and 
Gallants Four Score Years Ago." 

1857: April, "Kane;" May, "In Love;" July, "Again," "The 
Story of Carteret," "I Often See in Happy Dreams;" Novem- 
ber, "Cherry's Christmas Tree;" December, "Sully's Woodland 
Dreams." 

1858: April, "Frank Lee's Engagement," "Private Opinions 
of Joyeuse Tristan, Gent.;" "O Fairy-Like Child of May;" May, 
"May Days at Rackrack Hall," "Honoria Vane;" June, "Wan- 
derings on the Banks of the York;" September, "The Portfolio 
of a Rambler in Virginia;" November, "My Three Pipes," "Un- 
published Mss. from the Portfolios of the Most Celebrated 
Authors" (reprint). 

1859: January, "The Cynic;" April-December, "Greenway 
Court;" April, "The Song of Loronnaye;" May, "My Powhatan 
Pipe," "Crazy and Sane." 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 167 

1860: January, 'The Moon is in the Sky;" February, "Rec- 
ollections of a Contented Philosopher," "Phoebe's Wedding 
Night" (reprint); April, "Thomas Jefferson" (reprint); July- 
October, "The Knight of Espalion." 

1862: February and March: "Waiting for Florella," "Day 
Dreaming." 

Putnam's Monthly Magazine 

1853: August, "Virginia: Past and Present;" December, 
"Minuet and Polka." 

1854: March, "The Cocked Hat Gentry." 

1855: May, "The Dames of Virginia." 

1856: April, "How I Courted Lulu;" June, "Annie at the 
Corner;" July, "News from Grassland;" August, "John Ran- 
dolph;" November, "The Tragedy of Hairston." 

1857: June, "Greenway Court." 

Harper's 

1856: January, "Baby Bertie's Christmas;" April, "How I 
Was Discarded;" September, "Fanny and Myself," "In Me* 
moriam." 

1857: April, "The Story of a Huguenot's Sword;" July, "The 
Two Kates;" November, "Lost;" December, "Our Christmas at 
the Pines." 

1858: June, "A Nest of Cavaliers;" July, "Nelly's Slipper;" 
August, "The Red Bracelet." 

1859: January, "Only a Woman's Hair;" October, "Two Men 
and a Woman." 

1861: January, "A Dream of the Cavaliers;" March, "A 
Joyous Frenchman in Virginia." 

1876: June, "Virginia in the Revolution;" July, "The Writer 
of the Declaration." 

1877: January, "A Craniologist ;" April, "Old Wiley." 

1878: July, "Owlet;" August, "The White Sulphur Springs." 

1879: February, "The Moonshiners;" June, "Alexander 
Spottswood." 

1880: August, "A Boating Adventure." 

1881: November, "The Sumac-Gatherers." 

1884: June, "Grace Sherwood, the One Virginia Witch;" 
December, "Toinette." 



168 JOHN ESTEN COOKE, VIRGINIAN 

Appleton's Journal 

1869: May 29, "My Wicker-Seat;" August 14, "Eoyalty in 
Miniature;" September 25, "The Horseshoe Knights;" Decem- 
ber 4, "Washington's Wedding." 

1870: January 22, "The Sword and Surveying Instruments 
of Washington;" July 2, "Authors and Their Work;" Novem- 
ber 26, "A Struggle for Life." 

1871: February 11, 18, "The Natural Bridge;" November 4, 
"Some Old Virginia Houses;" November 18, "Alexandre Du- 
mas;" December 23, "Old Blandford Church;" December 30, 
"Flower of the Daisy." 

1872: April 20, "Old Virginia Manners;" September 21, 
"The Last Hours of Barras;" October 5, "The Cotton-Mouth." 

1873: February 8, "M. Thiers in His Study" (From the 
French of A. de Pontmartin) ; July 19, "Historic Houses in the 
Shenandoah;" August 16, "The Author of 'Swallow Barn';" 
September 12, "Mistletoe Hall;" December 20, "The Braddock 
House." 

1874: January 3, "Bonny Jean;" January 24, "Stratford 
House;" February 7, "Miss Muhlbach and Her System;" April 
4, "Gunston Hall;" May 2, "An Author's Way of Working;" 
June 13, "Pontmartin, the French Critic;" August 15, "Christ 
Church, Alexandria;" August 22, "Jefferson as a Lover;" 
August 29, "Cooper's Indians;" November 28, "Old St. Peter's 
Church;" December 5, "The Moore House, Yorktown;" De- 
cember 12, "Heaving Bricks." 

1875: January 9, "The Personal Character of General Lee;" 
March 20, "The Thursdays of Madame Charbonneau;" July 
17, "Fairy Fingers: A Few Notes for My Friends the Paint- 
ers;" December 11, 18, 25, "Suzanne Gervaz: A Maid of the 
Gevaudan" (Adapted from "Les Corbeaux du Gevaudan" by de 
Pontmartin). 

1876: February 5, 12, "A New View of Jacques and Touch- 
stone;" June 24, "Book-Making in Paris." 

1877: August, "My Lady Mary." 

1878 : April, "The Wonderful Family." 

1879 : September, "An Hour With Thackeray." 



INDEX 



Alden, Henry Mills, 121 

Ambler, Jacqueline, 49 

"Annie at the Corner," 74, 134 

Appleton, W. H., 96 

Appleton's Journal, 132, 134, 136 

Ashby, Turner, 91 

Athenceum, The, 34 

"Avalon," 23 

"Baby Bertie's Christmas," 58 
Bagby, G. W., 69, 70, 111 
Bancroft, George, 66 
"Barry and Courtlandt the Tall," 

29 
Bateman, Ellen, 39 
Bateman, Kate, 39, 40 
Batemans, The, 31, 35, 38, 39 
Battles of Virginia, The, 100 
Beatrice Hallam, 44 
Beauregard, P. G. T., 118 
Benjamin, Judah P., 89 
Bonnybel Vane, 58 
Briggs, W. H., 46 
Brown, W. G., 151 
Browning, Robert, 92, 154 
Bryan, C. Braxton, 156, 159 
Bryant, William Cullen, 66 
Bulwer-Lytton, Edward, 154 
Bunce, O. B., 121, 136 
Burwell, Rebecca, 49 
Burwell, Willie Anne, See Cooke, 

Mrs. Philip Pendleton 

Canolles, 133, 137, 138 
Captain Ralph, 44 
Carleton, G. W., 121, 129 



Carlyle, Thomas, 19, 24, 33, 45 
Carter, William, 142 
Carter, Mrs. William, 140 
Caruthers, William Alexander, 161 
Cary of Hunsdon, 137 
Chevalier Merlin, The, 8 
Christian Secretary, The, 52 
"Clouds," 66, 67 
Coad, Oral S., 40 
Collins, W. Wilkie, 134 
Conquest of New Mexico and Cal- 
ifornia, 4 
Cooke, Anne, 6 
Cooke, Edmund Pendleton (I), 

6, 7 
Cooke, Edmund Pendleton (II), 

113, 131 
Cooke, Edward St. George, 6, 7, 

18, 63 
Cooke, Flora, See Stuart, Mrs. 

J. E. B. 
Cooke, Henry Pendleton, 6, 7, 9, 

11, 63 
Cooke, John Esten (I), 3 
Cooke, John Esten (II), 

passim, 

birth and ancestry, 1 ff. 

begins practice of law, 26 

'becomes &> professional au- 
thor, 29 

joins the Episcopal Church, 
47 

in the Civil War, 73 ff. 

marriage, 110 

residence at "The Briars," 112 

death, 157 



169 



170 



INDEX 



Cooke, Mrs. John Esten, 91, 110- 

113, 119, 139-141 
Cooke, John Rogers (I), 5, 6, 10, 

12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 26, 30, 48, 

54, 63, 82 
Cooke, Mrs. John Rogers, See 

Pendleton, Maria 
Cooke, John Rogers (II), 75 
Cooke, Mary Pendleton (Mrs. Ste- 

ger), 6, 11, 89, 111 
Cooke, Nathaniel (I), 2 
Cooke, Nathaniel (II), 78 
Cooke, Pennie, 82 
Cooke, Philip Pendleton, 1, 6-9, 17, 

21, 23, 25, 28, 29, 86, 113, 158 
Cooke, Mrs. Philip Pendleton, 10 
Cooke, Philip St. George, 4, 75, 

96, 157 
Cooke, Robert Powel Page, 113, 

148, 157 
Cooke, Sarah Dandridge (Mrs. Du- 
val), 6, 11, 31, 112, 140, 141, 156 
Cooke, Stephen, 2, 6 
Cooke, Mrs. Stephen, See Esten, 

Catherine 
Cooke, Susan Randolph (Mrs. 

Lee), 113, 114, 124, 141, 157 
Cooper, James Fenimore, 34, 38, 

160 
"Craniologist, The," 156 
Critic, The (N. Y.), 150 

Dana, Charles A., 65, 66 
Dandridge, Ned, 86 
Daniel, John M., 90 
Dickens, Charles, 31, 71, 95 
Dispatch, The (Richmond), 31 
Dr. Favart's Strange Experiences, 

156 
Dr. Vandyke, 64, 132, 133, 135 
"Dream of the Cavaliers, A," 67 



Dumas, Alexandre pere, 19, 25, 33 
Duval, Mariah Pendleton, 140, 141 
Duyckincks, the, 33, 68, 96 

"Early Haunts of Washington," 32 
Early, Jubal A., 81, 98 
Eggleston, George Cary, 63, 76, 79, 

95, 109, 112, 116, 121, 135, 136, 

157 
"Eighteen Sonnets," 23 
Ellie, 21, 53-56, 58, 71, 132, 135 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 19 
English, Thomas Dunn, 68, 152, 

154 
Estcourt, 64 
Esten, Catherine, 2, 3 
Esten, John, 2 
Evan of Foix, 24-26, 53 
Evening Post, The (N. Y.), 150 

Fairfax), 13, 32, 37, 38, 53, 71, 129, 

133 
Fairfax, Lord, 12, 32, 37 
Falkland, 64 
Fanchette, 151, 152 
Field and Fireside, 65 
"Florence Vane," 8 
Free Press (Detroit), 137, 155, 156 
Froissart Ballads, 8, 25 

Gaston Phozbus, 25, 26 
Giddy, Mammy, 10, 31, 35, 82 
Godey's, 29 
Goodrich, Sallie, 110 
Gordon, John R., 81 
Grant, U. S., 100, 101 
Green, John Richard, 60 
"Greenway Court," 32 
Greenway Court, 37 
Griswold, Rufus W., 29 



INDEX 



171 



Hallam, Lewis, 39 
Halleck, Fitz-Greene, 68 
Hammer and Rapier, 100-103, 124 
"Handful of Autumn Leaves, A," 

33 
Harper, J. W., 121 
Harper's, 29, 31, 46, 57, 66, 67, 

146, 155 
Harrison, Mrs. Burton, 59, 161 
Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 160 
Hayne, Paul Hamilton, 38, 64, 75, 

118 
Hearth and Home, 116, 136 
Heath, Richard, 15 
Heir of Gaymount, The, 119, 121- 

128, 136, 148, 152 
Henry, Patrick, 46, 59 
Henry St. John, 45, 48, 57-60, 69, 

71, 72, 95, 134, 161 
Her Majesty the Queen, 121, 130, 

131, 141, 153 
Hilt to Hilt, 48, 103-105, 149, 162 
Home Journal (Baltimore), 103 
Home Journal (St. Louis), 65, 

128, 129, 132, 133 
Howells, William Dean, 161 
Hubbell, Jay B., 153 
Hugo, Victor, 106 

Invalidity of Presbyterian Ordina- 
tion, The, 4 

"Irving," 66 

Irving, Washington, 19, 34, 65, 68, 
160 

James, G. P. R., 63 

Jefferson, Joseph, 46 

Jefferson, Thomas, 48, 49, 59, 66 

Johnston, Mary, 161 

Jones, Joseph, 110 

Justin Harley, 132, 133, 134-136 



"Kane," 67 

Kennedy, John Pendleton, 5 
Kennedy, "Puss," 11 
Kercheval, Samuel, 32, 37 
Kingdom Mortgaged, A, 25, 26 
Knickerbocker Magazine, 7 
Knight of Espalion, The, 24-26, 53 

Lanier, Sidney, 118 

Last of the Foresters, The, 13, 30, 

50-53, 55, 135 
Leather Stocking and Silk, 13, 21, 

22, 33-37, 40, 51, 71, 135 
Lee, Fitzhugh, 87 
Lee, Robert Edward, 74, 79, 82, 107 
Lee, Susan Pendleton, 160 
Leigh, Benjamin Watkins, Jr., 14, 

15, 16, 20, 21, 34 
Life of Stoneicall Jackson, 80, 87- 

90 
Life of General Robert E. Lee, 87, 

107-108, 131 
Literary World, The, 33 
Lyons, "Buck," 35, 48 

McClellan, G. B., 101 

McClellan, W. J., 103 

Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 150 

Madison, James, 65 

Man Hunter, The, 128 

Mann, Lucy, 113 

Marshall, John, 65 

Mason, J. M., 89 

Matthews, Brander, 34 

Maurice Mystery, The, 154 

Meade, G. G., 101 

Meade, William, 108, 145 

"Minuet and Polka," 33 

Mohun, 21, 48, 87, 101, 105-107, 

112, 135, 161, 162, 163 
Monksden, 103 



172 



INDEX 



Monroe, James, 65 

Morgan, Daniel, 147 

Morris, A., 53, 56 

"Motley Ware, Esq.," pseudonymn 

of John Esten Cooke, 33 
Mr. Grantley's Idea, 144-146, 148 
Munford, T. T., 16, 81 
"My Acre," 124 

My Lady Pokahontas, 153-154, 162 
Myers, John, 35 

Native Virginian ( Orange ) , 111 

Nelson, William, 142 

New American Cyclopcedia, 64, 65, 

68 
New Eclectic (Baltimore), 136 
New York Day-book, 126, 127 
New York Times, 32, 34, 150 

Old Guard, The, 100, 126 
Out of the Foam, 128, 129-130, 134 
"Outlines from the Outpost," 80 
"Owlet," 156 

Page, John, 142 

Page, John Evelyn, 142 

Page, Mary Francis, See Cooke, 

Mrs. John Esten 
Page, Powel, 91, 140 
Page, Robert, 110 
Page, Thomas Nelson, 160 
Pattee, F. L., 162 
Paul, the Hunter, 65, 133 
"Pen Ingleton, Esq.," pseudonym 

of John Esten Cooke, 33 
Pendleton, Edmund, 5, 35 
Pendleton, Maria, 5, 6, 21, 48, 63 
"Peony," 29, 53, 58 
Pickett, Geo. E., 101 
Poe, Edgar Allan, 20, 29, 158 
Pollard, E. A., 96 



Pontmartin, A. de, 121, 154 
Pope, John, 88, 89, 101 
"Porte Crayon," See Strother, 

David 
Preston, Margaret Junkin, 148 
Pretty Mrs. Gaston, 121, 133-134 
Pride of Falling Water, The, 64, 

133 
Princeton, 2, 7 
Professor Pressensee, 142-144 
Putnam? s, 32, 33, 57, 103 

Randolph, John, 58 
Reade, Charles, 134 
Reed, Walter, 148 
Richter, Jean Paul, 35 
Ripley, George, 65, 66 
Rollin, Charles, 11 
Russell's Magazine, 64 

Sartain, John, 29 

Saturday Night (Philadelphia), 

103 
Sawney, 10, 120 
Scenes and Adventures in the 

Army, 4 
Scott, Walter, 161 
Shadoic on the Wall, The, 64, 132 
Shakespeare, William, 153 
Sheridan, P. H., 191 
Short, Charles W., 3 
Sigel, Franz, 89 
"Sigh for England, A," 155 
Simms, William Gilmore, 52, 118, 

160, 161 
Smith, John, 21 
Southern Illustrated News, 80 
Southern Literary Messenger, 8, 

14, 22, 23, 25, 28, 30, 32, 33, 37, 

49, 57, 64, 80, 158 
Southern Magazine, 136 



fju 



,■- 1 i - 



P$v 



INDEX 



173 



Southern Society, 103 
Southern World, 155 
Southey, Robert, 20 
Spofforth, Nathaniel, 2 
Stedman, E. C, 68, 150 
Stegers, the, 32 
Stevenson, R. L., 162 
Stonewall Jackson, 88-91, 94, 98, 

107, 152 
Stories of the Old Dominion, 58, 

147-148, 149, 160, 162 
Strother, David, 5, 30, 56 
Stuart, J. E. B., 75, 76, 77, 79, 81, 

97, 98, 99, 141 
Stuart, Mrs. J. E. B., 75 
Sun, The (N. Y.), 150 
"Sunset on the Chesapeake," 32 
Surry of Eagle 's-N est, 21, 48, 87, 

91-95, 99, 101, 103, 104, 105, 

106, 128, 135, 138, 142, 151, 153, 

161, 162, 163 

Tayleure, C. W., 46 
Tennyson, Alfred, 19, 20, 67 
Thackeray, W. M., 131, 136, 137 
"Thomas Carlyle," 23 
Thompson, John R., 28, 30, 38, 46, 

63, 66 
Timrod, Henry, 118 
To-day (Philadelphia), 135 
"To Kossuth," 24 
"Tragedy of Hairston," 103 
Transylvania Journal of Medicine, 

4 
Trent, W. P., 74 

"Tristan Joyeuse, Gent.," pseudo- 
nym of John Esten Cooke, 84 



Underwood, Oscar W., 17 

Van Evrie, J. K., 127 
Venable, C. S., 81 
Virginia, 149-151, 160, 162 
Virginia Bohemians, The, 148-149 
Virginia Comedians, The, 37, 40- 
48, 55, 58, 59, 60, 61, 71, 132, 
136, 138, 148, 151, 153, 163 
"Virginia in the Revolution," 146 
"Virginia, Past and Present," 33 
Virginia, University of, 14, 17, 66 

Washington, George, 32, 37, 59 
Wearing of the Gray, 96-100, 124 
"Wedding at Duluth, The," 134 
"Well of St. Kean, The," 19 
Whittier, John Greenleaf, 66 
William and Mary, College of, 14, 

46, 48 
Williams, John Sharp, 17 
Willis, Nathaniel Parker, 68 
Wilson, Mrs. Augusta Evans, 95, 

148 
Wilson, Woodrow, 17 
Wirt, William, 21 
Wise, Annie (Mrs. Hobson), 74 
Wise, Henry A., 74 
World, The (N. Y.), 87, 90, 91, 

136 
"Writer of the Declaration of In- 
dependence, The," 156 

Young, P. M. B., 118 
Youth of Jefferson, The, 48-50, 58, 
156 



VITA 

John Owen Beaty was born on December 22, 1890, son of 
James Robert and Eula Simms Beaty, both Virginians. 
Received the degree of Bachelor of Arts from the Univer- 
sity of Virginia, 1913, and the degree of Master of Arts 
(Romanic Languages) the same year. Graduate student in 
English (Professors Kent and Smith), University of Vir- 
ginia, 1913-1914. Holder of Bennett Wood Green Travel- 
ing Scholarship of the University of Virginia, 1914-1917. 
Student, Department of English and Comparative Litera- 
ture (Professors Ayres, Erskine, Krapp, Lawrence, Mat- 
thews, Thorndike, Trent, Van Doren), Columbia University, 
1914-1917. Served in U. S. Army, August 27, 1917, to 
August 27, 1919. Student of Literature (Professors Del- 
court, Grammont, Vianey), University of Montpellier 
(France), spring semester, 1919. Married Miss Josephine 
Mason Powell, of New York, September 25, 1920. Repre- 
sentative of Southern Methodist University at the Cen- 
tennial of the University of Virginia and at the inaugura- 
tion of President Angell of Yale, 1921. Member of Phi 
Beta Kappa. First Lieutenant, 0. R. C. Joint author with 
Jay B. Hubbell of An Introduction to Poetry (Macmillan, 
1922). Assistant Professor of English, Southern Metho- 
dist University, 1919 ; Associate Professor, 1920 ; Professor, 
1922. 



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